FDA Ordered to Reconsider EC Plan B

I pride myself on being an open-minded individual. But I just don’t get the folks who tout their “traditional values” on issues related to reproductive health.

On one hand, their passionate stance against abortion is gutsy and even admirable. Where others hedge, they believe unequivocally that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder. In their protests and rhetoric, they are not just looking out for their own. All life is precious is their mantra. 

Given that, however, I would think one of their objectives would be to prevent unplanned—and unwanted—pregnancies in the first place. Their actions, though, suggest otherwise. To wit, they discourage women from taking the birth control pill, prevent teens from learning about contraception, and make Plan B unavailable to young women.

Then they the condemn those who do get an abortion.

Isn’t that kind of like withholding food from a child and then blaming the starving kid for swiping a candy bar (or a bowl of gruel)?

Luckily, we see options becoming available for people with dissenting viewpoints. Today, in opposition to Bush, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York rejected the FDA’s decision to limit over-the-counter access to emergency contraceptive Plan B to women over eighteen. The court ordered the FDA to make the drug available to seventeen-year-olds in the short-term and to reconsider whether to make it available to all women, the very young included.

The court found that in denying Plan B—which, by the way, does not induce an abortion but rather prevents pregnancy—to young women, the FDA “acted … in response to political pressure.”

Hopefully, much of that political pressure is back in Texas now.