Judge: FDA must reconsider Plan B

Woo-hoo! In the continuing cheeseburger therapy to the hangover that was the Bush Administration's war on science, a federal judge ruled today that the Food and Drug Administration must change its rules regarding the emergency birth control medicine known as "Plan B." Under pressure from Bush's anti-abortion buddies, the FDA grudgingly approved Plan B without a perscription for women over 18. Now women aged 17 will also be able to get Plan B without a perscription. (It's still sold from behind the counter, and not accessible in a lot of places.)

I think a lot of the opposition to Plan B comes from people not understanding what it does. Plan B DOES NOT cause abortions for women who are already pregnant. It's merely a super-high dosage of the same oral contraceptives that many women take every day. Like those drugs, Plan B's instructions explicitly state that if a woman could possibly be pregnant, she should not take it. All Plan B does is prevent ovulation. It's not got nothing to do with implanting an already-fertilized egg.

A lot of Plan B's opponents say that making it more available will only encourage children to have sex (an argument used against most forms of birth control, as if no one ever had sex before the invention of condoms). I call BS - what proportion of Plan B users are children? (Keeping in mind that the state of North Carolina will let you screw at 16). No, this isn't about protecting the kids from their hormones. It's about policing the sexual activity of adult women, who some people continue to believe can't possibly have the capacity to make informed decisions.

Speaking of informed decisions...my best buddy in middle school taught me how to jimmy a bathroom condom machine, but I still didn't become sexually active until I was in my 20s. Why? BECAUSE I HAD PARENTS. Parents who were honest with me about the responsibilities that come along with sexual activity - teachers and church youth leaders, too. Until the FDA comes up with a pill for that, the head-in-the-sand right wingers need to stop harping on us evil feminists and see to their own houses.