AND HERE WE GO AGAIN with politicians getting all up into our ovaries. This time, the Obama administration made a surprising move to shut down the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendation that the morning-after pill be made available over the counter without age restrictions—a decision that forces teens to get a doctor’s prescription before they try to stop unwanted pregnancies.
Even though FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said that scientific data shows “there is adequate and reasonable, well-supported and science-based evidence that Plan B One-Step is safe and effective and should be approved for nonprescription use for all females of child-bearing potential,” US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius vetoed the decision, saying that adolescent girls may not be mature enough to understand how to use the morning-after pill, which, when taken within 72 hours of having unprotected sex, is almost 90 percent effective at preventing pregnancy.
So, just so we’re clear: a 15-year-old who had unprotected sex and knows that she doesn’t want to be a mom is too immature to follow the directions on the box, but mature enough to birth and raise a baby?
Long. Blank. Stare.
So it’s crystal: I’m anti-teen sex. The last thing I’m advocating is that we send out personal invitations to kids to have sex—protected or otherwise—and let them handle the consequences and repercussions of those specific actions—STDs, unwanted pregnancy, abortion—on their own. In my fantasy world full of perfection, unicorns, mermaids, and unlimited supplies of half-naked Idris Elbas slathered in chocolate-flavored glitter, human beings do not have sex until they’ve stood in front of God, the preacher, and their mama and daddy andnem and said, “I do, forever and ever Amen.”
Alas, I live on this here planet. Where teenagers are getting it in. Whether we parents approve or not. Whether they can get down to the CVS to get condoms or not. Whether the clinic gives them birth control pills or not. Whether they have access to and the money for reproductive health and abortion services or not. Whether they have the superhuman ability and cold, hard cash to take care of a baby or not.
So my God, why do we keep throwing up roadblocks to services and medication that help female humans of childbearing age protect their bodies and plan when they want to become parents?
I’m sure the Obama administration has its reasons for blocking a science-based decision made by the very department charged with making them. I’d begin with the idea that the last thing the president wants to do is give conservatives the ammunition they need to launch an all-out anti-abortion assault on the upcoming 2012 presidential elections—a raucous debate sure to distract from the most pressing issues at hand: the crappy economy, soaring unemployment rates, Wall Street crooks and cronies, and Newt Gingrich’s assault on the poor.
I just hate that by taking away teen girls’ ability to get the morning-after pill when they need it—without a costly, hard-to-secure appointment at the doctor to get it in time enough for it to actually be effective—teen girls have become political roadkill. Yet again.
—DECEMBER 2011