I hate to write about this non-local thing, but if men don’t, it becomes women’s work to point out that this is a terrible policy.
I’m talking, of course, about today’s news that Obama’s health and human services secretary Kathleen Sebelius has overruled the recommendation of her own experts at the Food and Drug Administration, killing a rule change that would have made Plan B emergency contraception available to teenagers and adults over the counter. Emergency contraception works by preventing the ovaries from releasing eggs, and is 89 percent effective at preventing pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.
We quite rightly criticized Bush for being anti-sex and anti-science, so it seems fair to say that this is disappointing. Sebelius should have let the rule go into effect.
I don’t know if this was a policy or a political decision, but either way it stinks. The forced pregnancy movement in this country isn’t going to support Obama, no mater what. And the need for emergency contraception isn’t going to go away.
There’s already a lawsuit working it’s way though the courts on this.
Any time a politician justifies something as being done for the welfare of children, you know she or he is lying.
Its purely political, Barry still needs to court the Hispanic vote, and they tend to be overwhelmingly Catholic. He probably made some deal with someone that needs to be made good on.
Look to his fellow conservative Democrats, they have something going on. Some little backroom thing.
It’s all politics man. Everything the Politicians do is based entirely on blowing smoke up someones ass or another and cutting deals to get their Politics done.
This just political BS. My best guess is that there’s no grand scheme, American pols aren’t good enough to have grand schemes, there just hiding out scared of what someone might say if the made Plan B OTC.
But, I’ve noticed that there’s a few judges out there that are getting sick of the political BS and the chicken shit politicians and it looks like we’ve got one of those judges working on this case.
@3 Actually, in point of fact an increasing number of Hispanics, both here and south of the border, are becoming evangelical Protestants. How this jibes with the support of non-Hispanic evangelicals here for draconian measures primarily targeting Hispanics rather escapes me.
As to the FDA’s actions versus those of HHS, there might be some wrong assumptions regarding different agencies’ charters. The FDA’s job is primarily to assure that foods, medicines and medical devices are safe and effective, not so much with social or ethical issues. HHS, on the other hand, is definitely concerned with the moral and practical implications of who uses what for what purposes. This is not to say that I’m in agreement with its decision in this case. It’s just that the FDA did a perfectly good job of determining that “Plan B” does what its manufacturer claims it does, without undue risk of harm to the person who takes it. What to do from there on should rightly be the responsibility of another entity.
The people that need the Plan B medicine the most are those of modest means or young people. Let’s just make the Plan B drug an over-the-counter medication available to all for a modest price.
If the Plan B medicine is available in multiple locations, then I also don’t see any problems with a pharmacy, for reasons of faith or conscience, that doesn’t wish to carry the medication. If the same medicine is available across the street at another pharmacy, it matters not whether the pharmacy on this side of the street carries the drug or not. As long as it’s reasonably available, pharmacies can opt out of selling the Plan B drug.
I vote that Plan B’s over the counter name should be… “Whoops my pants fell off”.
#6 can’t have that. KKKhristians feel it is their god given right to punish people who have sex and make mistakes.
@8,
Yeah, one of the fastest ways to ensure a life of poverty is to have kids without the means to pay for them. If Plan B would help prevent that, then it should be readily available to whomever wants to sell it.