24 August 2006 - 8:18am
GOP getting re-elected, plan b(?): Approve Plan B
The FDA has shocked me. After stonewalling their own doctors and scientists, the politicians in the agency have decided to act rationally, perhaps as a ploy to help the Republicans you've seen frothing at the mouth over the past two years whenever they talk about sex to seem more reasonable.
Girls 17 and younger still will need a doctor's note to buy the pills, called Plan B, the
Food and Drug Administration told manufacturer Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc.The compromise decision is a partial victory for women's advocacy and medical groups that say eliminating sales restrictions could cut in half the nation's 3 million annual unplanned pregnancies.
The pills are a concentrated dose of the same drug found in many regular birth-control pills. When a woman takes the pills within 72 hours of unprotected sex, they can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent. If she already is pregnant, the pills have no effect.
I hope the nutters out there will note that last sentence. The fact is that Plan B prevents conception. With this "morning after" pill, there is no abortion at all. It's not even an issue.
What's at issue for Plan B opponents is whether the man's sperm can claim dibs on a woman's body, even if they're just wiggling around in there without fertilizing an egg (conception), without even an egg's being there to be fertilized. It's one of the most absurd arguments for patriarchal privilege out there.
Of course, we can expect the nutters to continue to distort and lie about Plan B. Anything that gives women power over their own bodies is bad, according to them. Just wait. You'll see them all over cable news today (if you can stomach watching that crap).
The fear and unreason is already out there:
Bravo folks! let's give our kids one more reason to have sex like rabbits!
"Yeah, it's much better to have pregnancy as punishment! And kids will have sex because the girl will then get to take a pill!"
Don't worry, though. It seems that most people see the positive side. This could reduce the number of aborted pregnancies significantly. That should be good news for everybody.
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Comments
It is interesting how logical the Republicans become during election season.
World estimations of the number of terminations carried out each year is somewhere between 20 and 88 million.
3,500 per day / 1.3 million per year in America alone.
50% of that 1.3 million claimed failed birth control was to blame.
A further 48% had failed to use any birth control at all.
And 2% had medical reasons.
That means a stagering 98% may have been avoided had an effective birth control been used.
Bill Clinton once said that abortions should be available , safe and RARE. He is a very wise man.
I'd like to see an ultrasound in every clinnic to provide a more informed choice before going through with something they may regret.
I'd also like to see birth control made available to all who can't afford it.
I agree that medical procedures, including those that terminate a pregnancy, ought to be affordable.
You cite some statistics without citing the source of the statistics. Can you direct us to the source of the numbers?
Is there some brilliant insight you have on pregnancy you feel women are just too ignorant about?
How about this:
>I'd like to see a vasectomy for every man that he must deliberately reverse
so he may make a more informed choice before going through with impregnating
a woman and then judging decisions she makes about her own body.
The morning after pill is touted as a drug that will help reduce unwanted pregnancies, but it's not going to do that.
A 2005 study co-authored by a Planned Parenthood doctor in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that having Plan B on hand did nothing to reduce pregnancy rates compared to those who obtained the drug from a pharmacy.
Meanwhile, there is no enforcement of the restriction that the drug not be sold to girls under 18. The FDA has no authority or ability to enforce an age restriction.
A parent, older sibling or other relative or older friends could purchase the morning after pill for young teens, avoiding the requirement that they visit a doctor first before using the drug.
Also, selling the morning after pill over the counter will make it easier for men who abuse young women to cover up their crimes.
Any adult male who is having sex with a minor could walk into a pharmacy, buy the drug, and coax the girl into taking the pill.
Look at the dangerous abortion drug RU 486.
Abortion businesses were given certain restrictions by the FDA on the dangerous abortion drug RU 486, but those haven't been followed. That's resulted in the deaths of seven women and more than 900 who reported to the FDA they had been injured by the abortion drug -- with some requiring emergency surgeries for incomplete abortions, blood transfusions and infections nearly causing death.
The morning after pill has also failed to reduce the number of abortions in the way abortion advocates claim it would. The study mentioned above showed it had no affect on abortion rates.
Also, Scotland, which made the morning-after pill nonprescription in 1999. In 2005, Scotland reported its highest number of abortions since abortion was legalized in 1967.
For more information on the morning after pill or other issues, visit LifeNews.com.
Amazing where priorities lie for some people.
This coming from the people who crow about parental rights is quite ironic. You know, the same would apply for cigarettes, too.
I would HOPE that parents would have Plan B on hand for their daughters at risk.
Do you have a link? Considering that most people don't even know that Plan B exists (thanks to people like you who fight to suppress info on Plan B to people who could use it), I wonder at the value of such conclusions as you draw.
And to hell with the victim in this case. Better that the girl is made pregnant to satisfy your need for revenge than to protect the girl from greater harm resulting from such a crime, right? What kind of heartless attitude is that?
And why should the girl pay the price for the man's crime? What is gained by that?
Jesus fucking Christ!
Why? We're talking about Plan B, which is something else entirely. Why do you always try to conflate the two?
You really don't want to go there, or else you'd have to acknowledge that abortion rates are among the highest in Catholic countries where the reproductive laws are a wingnut's dream -- no birth control, no abortion. Brazil is right up there at the top, and their laws would make Dobson glow with pride.
Please spare the women in this country your particular sickness. Forced pregnancy and slavery for fertile women is no solution, no matter how much you want to stick your nose into other people's business.
I've made a pledge to buy Plan B for those young women under 18 who need it. I guess I'm precisely what the Right is afraid of.
It has nothing to do with preventing a woman from having control over her own body. There were deaths from RU486, so I'm sure there will be some concern over anything other type of pill that does anything of the sort. Justified or not, some people are going to be concerned about the safety of others.
Less unwanted pregnancies means less people on welfare, right? It would seem to me that the GOP would be in favor of anything that reduces the welfare rolls.
The political appointees overrode the scientists to block access to Plan B.
Plan B is nothing like RU486 -- but that didn't stop them from conflating the two. Look at your confusion, and the confusion of the nutter elsewhere in this thread.
Pill? Women? Sex? Oh, must be the same thing!
Too bad it wasn't a Halliburton product. Then Plan B would have been approved years ago.