Posted on 08/31/2005 7:15:18 AM PDT by Millee
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington called it "the worst double cross I've ever seen" in 13 years in the United States Senate.
Dr. Stephanie Teal, director of family planning at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, called it a blow to women's reproductive rights.
Last Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration bowed to anti-abortionists and prudes, delaying a plan that would help American women get emergency contraception for unwanted pregnancies.
The irony of the FDA's decision, said Murray, Teal and others, is that access to emergency contraception can reduce abortions.
FDA chief Lester Crawford said he wants two months of public comments before ruling on the so-called Plan B pills that Barr Laboratories wants to sell over the counter instead of by prescription.
You wonder what's left to say.
Plan B is safe and effective in preventing unwanted pregnancies, said Teal, an obstetrician and gynecologist.
"The hormone in it has been used for decades in birth-control pills with no safety concerns," Teal said. "The dose is the same for all. It's difficult to overdose. The instructions are easy. It's been used by millions of women worldwide with zero safety concerns."
Why Americans can't get it over the counter has nothing to do with science.
It has to do with anti-abortionists who consider some emergency contraception abortion. Those people helped elect George Bush and now want payback.
"The people cheering this (FDA) decision are cheering it over abortion," Murray said. "They are redefining abortion."
The morality police who voted for Bush are also happy to have the FDA parrot the myth that forcing women to have unwanted babies will curb teen sex.
Murray said Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt promised her a decision on Plan B by Thursday if she let Crawford's appointment to the FDA go through the Senate. Leavitt, she said, double-crossed her.
The greatest betrayal here is of American women.
In December 2003, the FDA's own advisory board unanimously agreed that emergency contraception could be sold safely over the counter. At the same time, the advisory board voted 23-4 to recommend that Plan B be made available to women of all ages.
"The FDA advisory board," said CU's Teal, "are the best reproductive scientists out there."
Ignoring their experts, FDA administrators refused in May 2004 to approve over-the-counter sale of Plan B. They wanted more evidence that young teenagers using the drug would not harm their health or become more promiscuous.
In July 2004, Barr came back with a proposal to make Plan B available without prescription to women 16 and older.
The FDA owed Barr a decision on this revision by Januarycq. Instead, it waited until Friday, then announced yet another delay. Crawford expressed concern about approving a drug for over-the-counter sales in the same dose and packaging as a prescription drug. He fretted about keeping the drug from girls younger than 17.
It's all a smoke screen.
"The scientific panel has approved this," Murray said. "What else could be holding it up? The American public needs to rely on the FDA to make sound scientific decisions."
Plan B "will reduce abortions," insisted Meg Froelich, acting executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado. "This is technology coming to the rescue."
That would be the rescue of women who don't want to face the difficult choice of whether to end a pregnancy.
What Plan B can never do is satisfy anti-abortionists clinging to theology instead of science. Plan B can never deliver the abstinence-only folks from their delusion that they can force teenagers to stop making whoopee.
So delaying a decision on emergency contraception to cater to these people has only one explanation.
"If it's not a scientific problem," said Teal, "then it has to be political or administrative. And it's not administrative."
Switching this to over the counter means that medicade will no longer pay for it. Sounds good to me!
Patty holds a part time afternoon job in one of Osama Ben Laden's day care centers in Seattle.
Why is it always after the fact with these people?
Can't this bimbo get it through her head that after conception, it's no longer called contrception? It's an abortion pill.
Aren't these ladies too old to need "emergency contraception"?
These are the same people who do not think that a partial birth abortion procedure is the killing of a child. What do they have to fear in the destruction of a group of cells?
Not to mention, Michelle Malkin has been chronicling quite well the Plan B deaths in this country to date. While not wide-spread, people are DEAD from it.
Just listened to my future child's heartbeat and got a nice snapshot of his head and arms from the wonderful women at my wife's doctor's office this week. My child may be only 12 weeks old and still reside inside my wife's body, but none of those idiots with degrees will EVER convince me that he's not a life.
Congrats to you & your wife with your upcoming blessing! (P.S. - Get sleep now!!) :-)
Absolutely. Congratulation on your baby! I'm about 16 weeks along with my 8th.
This answer works too, but that would imply personal responsibility, something I think the NARAL crew isn't too keen on...
These folks don't seem to think there is any difference between preventing pregnancy before hand and the kind of contraception that intervenes after egg and sperm meet to keep them from developing.
The first is a preventive measure, one that some think is immoral too, but a different thing nonetheless from the second, which actively kills an already-formed entity.
Thanks. And congrats to you too Tax-chick.
Is not technology wonderful? Just the difference in sonogram machines between my first one and now this child is absolutely amazing.
Makes me always wonder though. If the Supreme Court during Roe actually had access to this technology, would they have really gone as far as they did in shredding the Constitution to come up with the federal right to abort? Just the fact that the pro-Roe justices did not have the technology, but could of foreseen something like that in the future, shows that they wanted to believe the pro-abortion crowd at any cost.
The chief problem with the pill is that it kills unborn babies. But it also offers a significant danger to the mother. RU-486 has already killed several young girls who bought it over the counter, and this dangerous drug is pretty sure to do the same thing.
Leftist ideologues like Patty Murray are not really interested in the health of women whose rights they pretend to defend. They are interested in free sex without consequences, and the devil take the hindmost.
I agree. And the justices who keep upholding the "Roe" and "Doe" decisions, with all their implications, do know exactly what they're dealing with, and still don't care.
I have an ultrasound in three weeks. It will be fun to see Baby Whosis!
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