Plan B, personal responsibility, and the FDA
Pawpaw pointed me to this interesting WaPo news article.
The author is amazingly good at coming up with excuses for herself for her multiple failures, but at least she only half-assed blamed Bush here.
It?s most appropriately titled “What Happens When There Is No Plan B”?
Okay, so let’s analyze the multiple mistakes and failures that led this lady to get the abortion that she claims she didn’t want.
?”we managed to snag some rare couple time and, in a sudden rush of passion, I failed to insert my diaphragm.”
Here’s the first one. They failed to use the birth control properly. People do make mistakes, but she’s not exactly taking credit or responsibility for the mistake. Thank goodness there is still available options at this point.
She doesn’t even acknowledge the second mistake. She and her partner have failed to prepare for a contraceptive failure. They do happen. The time to decide the moral and religious implications of using emergency contraceptive (hereafter “EC”) is right now. If you decide that you might wish to take a type of EC such as the brand name “Plan B”, please plan ahead and acquire for yourself some of this medicine and learn how to use it. Things happen, don’t rely on our mostly good medical infrastructure to get you the medicine that you need instantly. Any of a number of problems such as shortages, natural disasters, or emergencies might toss a wooden shoe into the gears.
(I’ve already covered EC, Plan B and it’s off-label, but still safe and effective alternatives here and here.)
The third mistake was waiting until the next day to discover that her ob/gyn does not, for personal reasons, dispense EC. Other people are entitled to their opinions and I would never force a doctor to prescribe something he or she didn’t believe in. The lesson here is to find out now if your doctor has a problem with EC and boycott that doctor if necessary. I would suggest you let the doctor know why you are no longer a customer. She tried two other places, but they either would not prescribe, or would not prescribe it over the phone. She said that the weekend, and her 72 hour window to use the medicine was fast approaching. I don’t think she tried too hard, however, because I spent five minutes and found the Falls Church Virginia Planned Parenthood clinic. They have “Supply Pickup Hours” that includes walk-in emergency contraception on Friday from 11-3 and on Saturday from 10-4.
Even though personally I’m pro-choice, I would take the (hypothetical) decision to abort extremely seriously. If I was a woman, I’d hope I’d go above and beyond in the effort to not have an egg released by using EC, rather than risk pregnancy. Unfortunately, an unwanted pregnancy did occur in this case.
I was disappointed to hear that in Virginia there is a cooling off period for the abortion procedure. Waiting periods are not cool for firearms purchases or medical procedures. Whether the legislature is trying to guilt people into changing their mind or the state is trying to make sure that the procedure is done with no regrets, I’d like to personally tell the commonwealth to mind their own fucking business.
Fortunately (in this case) there are state borders. She got the procedure she needed in the District of Columbia, after navigating through a free speech protest on the Internet and one at her clinic.
I felt sick. Although I’ve always been in favor of abortion rights, this was a choice I had hoped never to have to make myself. When I realized the seriousness of my predicament, I became angry. I knew that Plan B, which could have prevented it, was supposed to have been available over the counter by now. But I also remembered hearing that conservative politics have held up its approval.
Again, she whines about “a choice I had hoped never to have to make myself”, yet she never took personal responsibility beyond plan A, and then she’s angry she had to wait for Plan B. She’s good about making excuses for herself, for the Bush administration, not so well.
My anger propelled me to get to the bottom of the story. It turns out that in December 2003, an FDA advisory committee, whose suggestions the agency usually follows, recommended that the drug be made available over the counter, or without a prescription. Nonetheless, in May 2004, the FDA top brass overruled the advisory panel and gave the thumbs-down to over-the-counter sales of Plan B, requesting more data on how girls younger than 16 could use it safely without a doctor?s supervision.
Apparently, one of the concerns is that ready availability of Plan B could lead teenage girls to have premarital sex. Yet this concern – valid or not – wound up penalizing an over-the-hill married woman for having sex with her husband. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.
Well here’s the point where she starts making sense. The idea, I believe, behind prescriptions is that the few dangerous drugs out there are made less available to be sure that you take them with supervision. Now I certainly don’t want people that have tuberculosis to go down to the pharmacy and play drug roulette with their contagious disease, but EC doesn’t get you high, isn’t habit forming and is fairly safe. It can’t be used as a date-rape drug and it isn’t a precurser to a illicit drug that is remarkably similar to Ritilan which is popularly perscribed nowadays for kids. There are more dangerous drugs that are OTC. Tylenol (acetaminophen) will, in abnormal amounts, promptly destroy your liver. That’s apparently why they add it to some prescription pain pills (Tylenol 3 with codeine). I guess the FDA doesn’t care about codeine addict’s livers.
The FDA is suppose to be a government agency who’s mission is to do what’s best for the health of the citizens. When I see the FDA in the middle of a squabble between a HMO and a drug maker over whether a drug should be OTC or not, and the arguments are based on which corporation gets to spend the least money, I see clearly how far it has come from serving the needs of the people.
There’s no compelling reason to keep EC as prescription only, no reason except for some partisan politician’s personal beliefs.
