As a lifelong supporter of women’s reproductive freedom, I am troubled by the recent discussion of the Plan B contraceptive pill. I see the usual partisan alignments, including on this forum, but I wonder if there may be more going on here.
Let me (over)share that I used this product once. As a 40+ mom, I was fortunate to have good health, medical insurance, a supportive partner, and a good circle of communicative women-friends, and yet this product scared the bejesus out of me. I’m generally a reluctant patient –calling doctors only when ordered to by others around me– but this one had such a tumultuous effect on my body that I called my ObGyn to talk me in. Interestingly, I was told that my experience was not uncommon. I made it through the week, haven’t had any lasting problems, and have no regrets.
For those of you without personal experience with this drug, let me say that this ain’t aspirin folks (for which, BTW, we need to send signed permission slips for schools dispense to kids). I firmly believe this product should continue to be available, but am uncomfortable that 15 year olds may take it with no medical practitioner –not even a pharmacist– in the mix.
When I hear Kathleen Sebilius (and I’m a big fan) pushing this so hard, I do see the conservatives at work. However, I also wonder if we might be watching a rerun of the infamous Paxil episode, where the pharmaceutical company pushed the product through an anemic FDA, hid its insufficient testing, and admitted no culpability when kids were hurt and dying. In the end, thousands of children were unknowing test subjects to a bad drug and a flawed regulatory system.
Until I know otherwise, I plan to sit out this particular reproductive rights battle. Anyone –women. parents– care to add perspective?
Thank you, thank you, thank you. There are far too many men on this progressive site, telling us what we should be thinking. If a child is in need of “Plan B” – that decision should rest with parents and guardians, or the court. Some adult needs to understand the cost/benefit analysis and make the decision. That this drug has been declared safe is of little comfort, given the potential effects on growing and developing bodies. So thank you for your truth about your experience.
SomervilleTomsays
First, I want to reject the suggestion that I should not express an opinion because I am male. Most importantly, I want to remind this community that I am the father of a seventeen year old daughter (as well as four older children). As a father, I have as much right to express an opinion about the options available to my daughter as any mother here. Secondly, we are talking about risk, not belief. Unless we choose to live in a society where science takes a back seat to faith, belief, prejudice, and opinion in matters of medicine, then the actions of the government in this case set an AWFUL precedent.
If this is a “reproductive rights battle”, then the opponents to Plan B should say so — and leave the FDA out of it. As it is, what we see playing out is, like climate change, a science versus politics dispute. The science that supports the FDA’s decision to make Plan B available is as compelling as the science that identifies human activity as the primary driver of global climate change. In my view, science should trump politics in both of these. Apparently some of us disagree.
There are some stark and revealing distinctions between Plan B and Paxil.
European nations were well ahead of the US in restricting Paxil availability to adolescents. Even in the US, Paxil was being prescribed to adolescents well before any clinical evidence of its safety was available.
None of this is true for Plan B. Plan B has been and continues to be widely available across Europe. Unlike Paxil, the clinical effects of Plan B on adolescents has been extensively researched in clinical trials.
I appreciate your sharing of your experience with this medication. I think the more salient comparison is not to aspirin but instead to either (a) a more typical abortion or (b) a full-term pregnancy.
Given that the female involved has already had sex, I’m not sure I understand why a fifteen year old is any less able to make this decision than a 40+ year old. The negative consequences of each alternative to Plan B are, if anything, far more profound for a fifteen year old than for a 40+ mom — particularly a woman with “good health, medical insurance, a supportive partner, and a good circle of communicative women-friends”. How many fifteen year olds face this choice with such resources?
In my opinion, you and we do our children a disservice by sitting out this discussion. When we do so, we leave the decision to ideologues. I am profoundly uncomfortable about putting the neighborhood drug store, pharmacist, and FDA in the role of priest, moral cop or surrogate parent. As a parent of a seventeen year old daughter, I feel an obligation to do all in my power to ensure that she has as many choices about her health as possible.
judy-meredithsays
and happen to agree with the President’s opinion on this one.
posted from from la la land with affection and respect for your point of view.
SomervilleTomsays
I think dialog about this is important, I don’t think any of us sit this one out.
I confess that I have some familiarity with la la land myself, having spent an uncomfortably large amount of time there.
jconwaysays
If a child is in need of “Plan B” – that decision should rest with parents and guardians, or the court
If most progressives, including the President, NARAL, and Planned Parenthood strongly oppose parental notification laws for abortion why are we imposing them for contraception?
Secondly, I strongly respect Judy and Justice4all and their POVs as mothers. I have no doubt that I would trust them as parents and guardians to make the right decisions for their daughters. My wife to be had parents, who in spite of being liberal UMC pastors were still fresh off the boat Filipino immigrants who didn’t understand what an OB/GYN was, what birth control was, or how tampons worked. They honestly would not let my fiancee see an OB/GYN until after she went to college, they wouldn’t let her buy tampons, and they didn’t want her using birth control pills. So no, not every parent is educated or to be trusted, and they were just ignorant, they are a whole lot of malicious parents out there as well. And we can just open a newspaper and see what dumb things right wing judges are imposing on women, so I don’t trust them as well.
I trust and want to empower women, even young women, to make these decisions themselves without any artificial barriers.
SomervilleTomsays
Specifically this:
If most progressives, including the President, NARAL, and Planned Parenthood strongly oppose parental notification laws for abortion why are we imposing them for contraception?
Precisely.
justice4all22says
is “woman.” A child is not a woman. She cannot vote. She cannot obtain medications containing pseudoephedrine and ephedrine. She can’t even get Tylenol from the school nurse without a note. Yet, we have adults on this site who wave off these obvious contraints (seriously – where were you when the rules on freaking cold remedies went down) in the name of “empowerment?” This is not about whom you trust or don’t trust – you are content to allow the government to usurp the decision-making of parents concerning a drug which introduces hormones into young, still developing bodies. This drug was passed by the FDA in 1999 – it’s still too soon to know if this damned thing can cause cancer in later years or not, because again – we’re not talking about adults – we are talking about children. And the other thing that you are robbing parents of is the opportunity to talk, discuss and educate our children. And I am speaking not just as the mother of a daughter – I am also a grand mother, too. (High five, Judy) I have had decades of experience as a parent, dealing with everything from Sesame Street to sex, – and the idea that progressives want to strip parents of their right to deal with a terribly challenging, private and sensitive situation is just appalling to me. As a mother, in addition to looking at the cost/benefit analysis, I would want to discern whether my child was coerced. I would want to know if she was bulled or hurt in any way. But a mother can’t even have the discussion if this goes forward as is. This is not “empowerment,” necessarily. It’s a way to also keep secrets from the people who love them best.
SomervilleTomsays
Please, enough with the over-the-top hyperbole.
Making condoms freely available didn’t “strip” parents of “the opportunity to talk, discuss and educate” their children. If anything, the availability and obvious store-shelf packaging made those conversations easier.
It seems to me that you propose to use MORE coercion to “discern whether [your] child was coerced”. If our daughters choose to hide important matters like this from us, then blocking their access to safe contraceptives worsens the problem.
Adolescents must have “secrets”, just as healthy adults in healthy relationships have secrets. It’s called “privacy”. I, too, have had decades of experience as parent. I, too, have dealt with everything from Sesame Street to sex. My experience has taught me that being willing to listen, being slow to judge, and being non-coercive is far more effective at maintaining the communication with my children than the sort of over-bearing mother-henning you apparently advocate.
Nothing about making Plan B freely available stops us from talking with our daughters about crises like this. Nothing. Your suggestion that “a mother can’t even have the discussion if this goes forward as is” presumes the very outcome you seek to avoid.
In my view, the key to communication with our children, as with anybody else, is opening, rather closing, doors.
justice4all22says
in your ignorance, you are, indeed. Do you have any idea what girls face in school? How about sexual harassment stats? This is not hyperbole. We have seen a number of cases very recently of young girls who were raped and then later victimized online. It’s real. It’s not hyperbole. And kids have a hard time admitting it when it happens. And I am no mother hen – I am an informed, and empowered mother lion, who knows better than to just blithely trust my child’s health to a drug that may or may not be right for her just because a pack of preening progressives say so. Giving this kind of medication over the counter to children is inappropriate. The president is the father of two girls….holy cow – maybe he gets it , too. It’s a pity that that progressives are using this issue as a crazy litmus test for progressiveness.
jconwaysays
We have seen a number of cases very recently of young girls who were raped and then later victimized online
Exactly! Which is why girls should get those plan B pills ASAP so they don’t have to carry their rapists baby. I do not doubt you are a mother lion, you still will be if Plan B is over the counter, but what about the girls who dont have mother lions? That’s the question, and sadly they can’t wait to get good parents, they need the pills now and they need control over their bodies now.
dhammersays
I don’t mean to be rude, but if you’re interested in making sure girls aren’t being coerced, denying them the ability to make their own choices about reproductive choice seems an awful strange way to show it.
Let’s say you discuss, educate and engage your daughter about Plan B. You tell her you’re concerned she might get cancer, or be harmed in some other way. You discuss the risks, the challenges and let her know you don’t want her to take the drug. If she says she doesn’t care, she wants to take it anyway, what right do you have to deny her? The fact that your her parent? Sorry, I don’t buy it.
People, not women and men, have a right to self determination – that doesn’t start when they’re 18 or when they’re mature enough to make a good decision. It starts when they have the ability to make decisions. Your only right as a parent is help them make those decisions. Good for you if your kid engages with you about these decisions, but to deny medical services to a person whose parent doesn’t, well to me that’s coercion.
jconwaysays
And where she is coming from, I will disagree that this will prevent these kinds of conversations. Young women that trust their parents will turn towards them, those that would fear being coerced by them or that they cannot have these conversations will now have the freedom to avoid the terrible costs of unintended pregnancy, without resorting to abortion, and without requiring the permission of a parent or a judge who might not be sympathetic with their predicament.
Under either scenario, the scenario where Obama’s cave to the religious right is upheld or the scenario where science and evidence based health care policy is determined free of politics, you are more than able to have these conversations with your kids, warn them of the risks, and make them aware. Basically good parents have nothing to fear from this, the status quo is unchanged, the conversations you should be having will be happening regardless of Plan Bs availability. The only losers in this are well intentioned but ignorant parents like my future in laws, bad parents, and right wing judges. Thats my take anyway.
petrsays
Let’s say you discuss, educate and engage your daughter about Plan B. You tell her you’re concerned she might get cancer, or be harmed in some other way. You discuss the risks, the challenges and let her know you don’t want her to take the drug. If she says she doesn’t care, she wants to take it anyway, what right do you have to deny her? The fact that your her parent? Sorry, I don’t buy it.
Prior to the age of consent a girl can SAY she wants to have sex… she can beg, plead and swear up and down on a stack of bibles three ways from Sunday that she is ready and willing.
It’s still rape.
A boy can can do likewise and take her ‘willingness’ for consent. She can affirm to the entire world that she’s doing what she wants of her own free will.
It’s still rape.
And it will continue to be rape so long as there continues to be questions surrounding impulse control, decision making and emotional and psychic maturity of children. So what if some teens develop faster? You don’t like the blanket prohibition because it’s unfair to that tiny subset of teens who are ready? Tough. The opposite is worse: it’s not simply unfair to those who aren’t ready, it’s often tragic.
jconwaysays
I really am no longer getting where this conversation is going. Are you saying girls under 15 that get raped deserve the fates of their unwanted pregnancies? I am 99% certain you are NOT saying that, but I honestly do not see how making Plan B over the counter causes more rapes, if anything it will prevent more unintended pregnancies from rape.
It’s birth control, I do not know the last time you’ve been in a high school or middle school Petr, but you can get condoms there. Plan B is a very powerful contraceptive used after the fact, but it does the same thing a condom does. It’s not a form of abortion and in many cases, it’s the only thing preventing girls who are victims of date rape or were too drunk to use protection or were pressured into not using it or lied to about the male using it from getting pregnant. You admitted in the post above that these are real problems real girls face from real boys. I don’t trust 15 year old boys either, which is exactly why I trust girls under 15 to have access to Plan B and why I feel that is an essential right they have. Who is this threatening?
Christophersays
…but when a girl is raped she should get to the ER immediately and Plan B should be administered there along with everything else you do with a rape victim. The rest of your scenarios are examples of exactly why I believe that teenagers of both sexes should adopt a just say no attitude.
SomervilleTomsays
Jeesh.
Most girls who will want this will not be victims of rape. For those who are, the approach advocated by you and our “mother lion” (and their male counterparts) only compounds the trauma they are already going through.
As jconway has observed, while I’m sure that justice4all is fine and loving parent, a great many “mother lions” most assuredly are NOT. There are a host of good and very strong reasons why progressives have rejected various “parental notification” laws for decades, and those reasons all apply here as well.
Christopher, your advocacy of this draconian and coercive measure only demonstrates that your beliefs are utterly unenlightened by experience — both as a father and as a lover.
The notion that “just say no” should be enforced by the threat of unwanted pregnancy or abortion is sheer right-wing madness. Unless you also advocate equally strongly for similar restrictions on condoms, it is sexist as well.
Christophersays
I actually do advocate just as strong responsibility on the part of the male party. However the two methods are not equivalent – one is a drug, the other isn’t. This should be subject to the same medical standards as anything else, presumed to be a free choice for adults, but presumed to involve the parent for minor children. I’m not advocating harder to access necessarily, but not easier either. Rapes need to be reported immediately and this is something that can be done at that point. I would suggest that learning what I have about the potential consequences and seeing people I know live thruogh them I am in fact very enlightened about what happens and needs to happen, thank you very much. Just because we disagree does not make me a draconian right-winger. In fact I think my way is ultimately quite liberating and therefore progressive in its way.
SomervilleTomsays
I won’t stop comparing Plan B to a condom, because they are both contraceptives. The fact that one is a drug is relevant ONLY to the safety question. If it is safety that concerns you, then parental approval should be required for a person under 16 to buy aspirin. You seem to agree that that’s absurd — it is equally absurd to restrict Plan B. The FDA says so, and the courts say so.
It is your “abstinence” argument that provokes my characterization of your position as right-wing. I stand by that characterization. It your suggestion that Plan B should be available only to rape victims and only from the ER that is not only draconian, but in fact — at least to me — a bit creepy. Most girls who will want Plan B are not rape victims (unless you are talking about statutory rape). Most often, they will be girls who for a variety of reasons end up having consensual unprotected sex. To force them to go the ER — or risk becoming pregnant and/or have an abortion — IS draconian and coercive.
Christophersays
as if it’s something that just happens. That there is no consciencious decision making involved. There was either an affirmative decision to have sex or it’s rape, nothing in between. As has been pointed out you do need parental permission for some medication is a school context and they’ve cracked down on cold medication of all things because someone figured out how to turn it into something more potent. I am not an expert in the relative safety of various medications, but I do standby the right of lawmakers to restrict the sale of various products to minors.
jconwaysays
there was either an affirmative decision to have sex or its rape, nothing in between
I respect you Christopher, and usually agree, but that is a stunningly ignorant statement of the lived reality of teen sexuality these days.
Christophersays
I’m coming around to allowing for a mistake, but in my book the absence of an explicit yes should be taken as a no, that includes if one party is too drunk (which would also be nice if didn’t happen but I digress) to give true consent. Any degree of non-consent, reluctance, etc. should be interpreted as a cue to back off.
jconwaysays
There is no in-between from the eyes of the law, which is why first day at college we had to watch skits and movies about ‘no means no’. That was also hammered home in high school sex ed as well.
I am saying though, there are plenty of situations where teens might not be going into a situation thinking they will be doing anything and then they do. It’s why abstinence only has such a spectacular fail rate. And why ‘just say no’ is a terrible approach to reducing drug use or teen pregnancy, and why it’s used by the ‘personal responsibility’ crowd to justify inhumane prohibition policies on drugs and reproductive freedom.
Christophersays
…my approach to abstinence is not the “abstinence only” method you are probably thinking of. That IS the right-wing dogma Tom has often referred to. They preach abstinence without any backup, room for questions, discussion of the reasons, facts, science, etc, usually resorting to a variation of the Bible says so and outright lies like birth control causes cancer or somesuch. I am more than comfortable with the idea that teaching the facts and allowing for questions and discussion will lead to the right conclusions. I still don’t understand teens not thinking they will do something then they do. You make it sound like starting with a kiss or a dance there is some momentum that is unstoppable and I don’t buy it. Until something happens you have a choice for it not to happen. You can say this is where I draw the line and if you are not allowed to draw that line it is rape. This isn’t speculation on my part; I and plenty of my peers managed. Always keep a clear head, know your values, limits, etc. and you will be fine. There are a whole host of things we don’t allow or strongly advise kids not to do and point out there are consequences. There’s no reason sex should not be one of those things.
jconwaysays
Some kids will still not listen and experiment and I don’t see why they have to get a parent, possibly an ignorant or unsympathetic one, or a judge, and west and south of 495 we don’t know if they would be sympathetic either, to get a simple form of contraception. It’s a powerful short term dose of the same medicine used in the pill to flush out a potentially fertilized embryo. And I am not arguing kids shouldn’t be experimenting with drugs, sex, and alcohol before 18-but they do. And we can hold them to higher standards while offering humane and safe medical treatments for times that they don’t. That is all I am arguing.
petrsays
but I honestly do not see how making Plan B over the counter causes more rapes, if anything it will prevent more unintended pregnancies from rape.
I never said anything remotely resembling the above statement. Never. Never have. Never will. Not the argument. You are carrying baggage from an entirely separate argument unto this one.
Statutory rape is a crime. It is a crime because our society has deemed young, impulsive, impressionable and still developing girls and boys as UNABLE to make the decision. The boy cannot ask and the girl cannot answer. They are LEGALLY barred from making the decision because WE do not trust them to make the decision in an informed, sober-minded and SAFE manner. We do not trust young men to refrain from predatory behavior and we do not trust young women to be able to defend themselves, whilst alone, against those predators. And the IMPLICATIONS of LEGALLY banning that SPECIFIC decision is that we LEGALLY cannot then allow decisions that follow from the breach of that ban. It can’t, and ought not to be done.
You’re position is that, well, some teens can handle it. BFD. I say the corner case does not define the general case and, further, I would rather err on the side of caution. At some point between the onset of puberty (which is not, itself, a point in time but a spectrum) and legal majority, and this point differs for every child and every circumstance, maturity emerges and we begin to trust them to make these decisions. Some get there early. Others never get there. But legally, nobody gets there prior to the age of consent. It’s a simple as that.
It’s not a form of abortion and in many cases, it’s the only thing preventing girls who are victims of date rape or were too drunk to use protection or were pressured into not using it or lied to about the male using it from getting pregnant.
You continually act as if it is all OK, except under the same circumstances in which it is not OK for an adult… But you are missing the point: statutory rape is a law because we say, deliberately and clearly, that children aren’t able to make that decision. THEY ARE NOT ADULTS. AND THEY DO NOT HAVE THE SAME FREEDOMS AND LIBERTIES ADULTS HAVE. Thus, you cannot hold them to the same standard and you cannot use the same points of reference. It DOES NOT MATTER a whit whether the child was drunk. It does not matter if she was “pressured”. At that age we simply SAY SHE WAS PRESSURED. We ASSUME coercion and we have set that assumption into law. If you want to think of it as the child (boy or girl) is ALWAYS in a state akin to being legally drunk, if that makes if easier for you, or, put another way, always in a state of impressionable impulsivity akin to that found under the influence, fine, but the point remains: we say children cannot make the decision AND therefore they cannot make the decisions that derive from the decision also. I’m very sorry if you don’t like that, or feel somehow upset by that, but there it is.
I don’t trust 15 year old boys either, which is exactly why I trust girls under 15 to have access to Plan B and why I feel that is an essential right they have. Who is this threatening?
You are ‘protecting’ them after the fact. So, in affect, you are threatening them. The damage, if any, is done well before you would step in and hand them a pharmaceautical cure. You can clean up the loose bits and salve your conscience and say, “well, at least she won’t have to deal with long term consequences’, (without proof you may say this…) but you don’t know. What you want, from what you say here, is that everything is made all tidy and the 15 year old boy can go back to being a 15year old boy and the 15 year old girl can… what? Move on with her life?
kirthsays
You are ‘protecting’ them after the fact. So, in affect, you are threatening them.
That’s the most bizarre reasoning I’ve seen in a long time. Some significant portion of those teenage girls that the statutory-rape laws fail to protect are unable to negotiate the hurdles involved in ending an unwanted pregnancy. Your rigid position sentences those kids to parenthood.
petrsays
Some significant portion of those teenage girls that the statutory-rape laws fail to protect are unable to negotiate the hurdles involved in ending an unwanted pregnancy. Your rigid position sentences those kids to parenthood.
My position is not the rigid, and blanket, denial you’ve insinuated here. No where have I said that we should not allow adequate and appropriate medical care to anybody, be they victim of rape or no. I sentence no one. My position is the one that recognizes the difficulties in the situation and I make no pretense to solutions save the clear truth that ease of access, while certainly the tidiest solution, remains inadequate.
dhammersays
What you’re refusing to talk about is the underlying rationale for age of consent laws. If we assume any decision regarding sex and children has to be made or approved by an adult, then what your saying follows.
Adolescents makes these decisions all the time without input from their parents, however. Maybe they shouldn’t, but they do. I want public policy that supports those children, and recognizes the reality that lots of parents are awful and stupid. In my mind, that’s lots and lots of sex ed, pretty much unfettered access to birth control and age of consent laws that try to treat children as close to adults as they can. I’m comfortable with the inconsistency because I think it produces the best result.
petrsays
What you’re refusing to talk about is the underlying rationale for age of consent laws. If we assume any decision regarding sex and children has to be made or approved by an adult, then what your saying follows.
Adolescents makes these decisions all the time without input from their parents, however. Maybe they shouldn’t, but they do.
No. Even if a parent says “go ahead and get yourself laid all you want,” it’s still rape if the child is under the age of consent. There’s no difference to split here: The parent can’t waive the law any more than the child can. The parent can’t give the child permission to rob a bank or sell drugs. Parenthood doesn’t work that way. Some states require parental consent, and/or notification, for abortion services but no state that I know of waives the age of consent for sexual activity: that’s shade to close to prostitution I should think.
You all CONTINUE to treat this as a possible decision that the child can make if only the stars align or puberty happens or parents consent or… I don’t know what… but it’s not that way at all. The child can’t make the decision. The boy can’t do it. The girl can’t do it. They can’t make the decision and there is nobody who can make the decision for them. The law defines them as incapable of making the decision, or, conversely, the law defines adults in terms of the ability to safely and forthrightly make decisions that have physical, social, mental, emotional and moral ramifications. I happen to think that it is a good law.
The implications are clear: if they CANNOT make the decisions, yet still the act is accomplished, then they HAVE NOT made a decision but, rather, are at the mercy of somebody else: the decision was made from them or, more likely, at the point of their, or some other adolescents, lack of impulse control. This is not a basis to say they made a decision. You would, it seems, treat it like a clear decision. It is never clear. The law defines it as impossible to be clear. Everything about all my experiences, both as a parent and one time adolescent myself, with three brothers, tells me that there is great wisdom in this definition.
SomervilleTomsays
You wrote:
The child can’t make the decision. The boy can’t do it. The girl can’t do it. They can’t make the decision and there is nobody who can make the decision for them. The law defines them as incapable of making the decision, or, conversely, the law defines adults in terms of the ability to safely and forthrightly make decisions that have physical, social, mental, emotional and moral ramifications. I happen to think that it is a good law.
Wrong. If you truly believe this, you too are living in la-la-land. Adolescents make this decision ALL THE TIME — to the tune of 20-30%. Perhaps they’re making bad decisions. Perhaps they’re making uninformed decisions. Perhaps it’s decision driven by impulse. They are, however, making a decision. They make a decision when they go his or her house when the parents are out. They make a decision when they find a secluded place in the woods. They make a decision when they start kissing, they make a decision when they take off their clothes.
This “good law” is leading you to argue that pregnancy is better than unsupervised Plan B administration for a 15 year old girl. In my view, that absurd outcome should suggest that you’ve divided by zero somewhere in your “proof”.
Oh, and by this argument, shouldn’t condoms also be similarly restricted?
petrsays
Wrong. If you truly believe this, you too are living in la-la-land. Adolescents make this decision ALL THE TIME — to the tune of 20-30%.
No. No. No again. You. Don’t. Get. It. It is NOT a law that says “if you decide in one way, and not the other, you are breaking the law.” No. No. and again, no. It is a law that says “You do not have the emotional, physical, mental and moral acumen to make the decision.” The law does not say you can make the decision and suffer the consequences. The law says you cannot make the decision. because you don’t have the full rights of citizenship and adulthood.
The 20 -30% who are “making the decision” are NOT MAKING ANY DECISION but are being coerced. It may feel like they are making a decision. They are not. It may look and act like a real decision. it is not. Legally, it is not. Emotionally, physically and mentally it is not. Legally, and also according to the rationale behind the legality, they are being coerced. There is no circumstances, legally or otherwise for a person WHO CANNOT CONSENT, to say they consented. It is an impossibility. They were coerced. Again, since they are not adults the coercion is not the same, in scope, range, manner and application as that which would coerce an adult. The standards are different. That you dismiss 20-30% of children being coerced as merely them making decision, well, I find that troubling.
This “good law” is leading you to argue that pregnancy is better than unsupervised Plan B administration for a 15 year old girl.
I have never once argued that either pregnancy or plan B adminstration is either better or worse. I make no such arguments. My arguments go deeper and they question the core of the issue: pregnancy and plan B for a 15 year old girl in Massachusets are both outcomes of rape. There is no circumstances in which a 15 year old girl who is either pregnant or in need of plan B WAS NOT RAPED.
Let me be completely and totally clear: I would rather that 15 year old girls not be raped. I would also rather that 15 year old boys not be rapists. I think that ‘Plan B” though tidier for you and your conscience is no less a burden for that 15 year old girl WHO WAS RAPED than a pregnancy. You can think it cleaner and more… I don’t know… absolving, or something… but there is no indication that such is the case and dealing with the physical consequences of a rape doesn’t begin to deal with possible emotional and mental issues that will arise.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. There are far too many men on this progressive site, telling us what we should be thinking. If a child is in need of “Plan B” – that decision should rest with parents and guardians, or the court. Some adult needs to understand the cost/benefit analysis and make the decision. That this drug has been declared safe is of little comfort, given the potential effects on growing and developing bodies. So thank you for your truth about your experience.
First, I want to reject the suggestion that I should not express an opinion because I am male. Most importantly, I want to remind this community that I am the father of a seventeen year old daughter (as well as four older children). As a father, I have as much right to express an opinion about the options available to my daughter as any mother here. Secondly, we are talking about risk, not belief. Unless we choose to live in a society where science takes a back seat to faith, belief, prejudice, and opinion in matters of medicine, then the actions of the government in this case set an AWFUL precedent.
If this is a “reproductive rights battle”, then the opponents to Plan B should say so — and leave the FDA out of it. As it is, what we see playing out is, like climate change, a science versus politics dispute. The science that supports the FDA’s decision to make Plan B available is as compelling as the science that identifies human activity as the primary driver of global climate change. In my view, science should trump politics in both of these. Apparently some of us disagree.
There are some stark and revealing distinctions between Plan B and Paxil.
European nations were well ahead of the US in restricting Paxil availability to adolescents. Even in the US, Paxil was being prescribed to adolescents well before any clinical evidence of its safety was available.
None of this is true for Plan B. Plan B has been and continues to be widely available across Europe. Unlike Paxil, the clinical effects of Plan B on adolescents has been extensively researched in clinical trials.
I appreciate your sharing of your experience with this medication. I think the more salient comparison is not to aspirin but instead to either (a) a more typical abortion or (b) a full-term pregnancy.
Given that the female involved has already had sex, I’m not sure I understand why a fifteen year old is any less able to make this decision than a 40+ year old. The negative consequences of each alternative to Plan B are, if anything, far more profound for a fifteen year old than for a 40+ mom — particularly a woman with “good health, medical insurance, a supportive partner, and a good circle of communicative women-friends”. How many fifteen year olds face this choice with such resources?
In my opinion, you and we do our children a disservice by sitting out this discussion. When we do so, we leave the decision to ideologues. I am profoundly uncomfortable about putting the neighborhood drug store, pharmacist, and FDA in the role of priest, moral cop or surrogate parent. As a parent of a seventeen year old daughter, I feel an obligation to do all in my power to ensure that she has as many choices about her health as possible.
and happen to agree with the President’s opinion on this one.
posted from from la la land with affection and respect for your point of view.
I think dialog about this is important, I don’t think any of us sit this one out.
I confess that I have some familiarity with la la land myself, having spent an uncomfortably large amount of time there.
If most progressives, including the President, NARAL, and Planned Parenthood strongly oppose parental notification laws for abortion why are we imposing them for contraception?
Secondly, I strongly respect Judy and Justice4all and their POVs as mothers. I have no doubt that I would trust them as parents and guardians to make the right decisions for their daughters. My wife to be had parents, who in spite of being liberal UMC pastors were still fresh off the boat Filipino immigrants who didn’t understand what an OB/GYN was, what birth control was, or how tampons worked. They honestly would not let my fiancee see an OB/GYN until after she went to college, they wouldn’t let her buy tampons, and they didn’t want her using birth control pills. So no, not every parent is educated or to be trusted, and they were just ignorant, they are a whole lot of malicious parents out there as well. And we can just open a newspaper and see what dumb things right wing judges are imposing on women, so I don’t trust them as well.
I trust and want to empower women, even young women, to make these decisions themselves without any artificial barriers.
Specifically this:
Precisely.
is “woman.” A child is not a woman. She cannot vote. She cannot obtain medications containing pseudoephedrine and ephedrine. She can’t even get Tylenol from the school nurse without a note. Yet, we have adults on this site who wave off these obvious contraints (seriously – where were you when the rules on freaking cold remedies went down) in the name of “empowerment?” This is not about whom you trust or don’t trust – you are content to allow the government to usurp the decision-making of parents concerning a drug which introduces hormones into young, still developing bodies. This drug was passed by the FDA in 1999 – it’s still too soon to know if this damned thing can cause cancer in later years or not, because again – we’re not talking about adults – we are talking about children. And the other thing that you are robbing parents of is the opportunity to talk, discuss and educate our children. And I am speaking not just as the mother of a daughter – I am also a grand mother, too. (High five, Judy) I have had decades of experience as a parent, dealing with everything from Sesame Street to sex, – and the idea that progressives want to strip parents of their right to deal with a terribly challenging, private and sensitive situation is just appalling to me. As a mother, in addition to looking at the cost/benefit analysis, I would want to discern whether my child was coerced. I would want to know if she was bulled or hurt in any way. But a mother can’t even have the discussion if this goes forward as is. This is not “empowerment,” necessarily. It’s a way to also keep secrets from the people who love them best.
Please, enough with the over-the-top hyperbole.
Making condoms freely available didn’t “strip” parents of “the opportunity to talk, discuss and educate” their children. If anything, the availability and obvious store-shelf packaging made those conversations easier.
It seems to me that you propose to use MORE coercion to “discern whether [your] child was coerced”. If our daughters choose to hide important matters like this from us, then blocking their access to safe contraceptives worsens the problem.
Adolescents must have “secrets”, just as healthy adults in healthy relationships have secrets. It’s called “privacy”. I, too, have had decades of experience as parent. I, too, have dealt with everything from Sesame Street to sex. My experience has taught me that being willing to listen, being slow to judge, and being non-coercive is far more effective at maintaining the communication with my children than the sort of over-bearing mother-henning you apparently advocate.
Nothing about making Plan B freely available stops us from talking with our daughters about crises like this. Nothing. Your suggestion that “a mother can’t even have the discussion if this goes forward as is” presumes the very outcome you seek to avoid.
In my view, the key to communication with our children, as with anybody else, is opening, rather closing, doors.
in your ignorance, you are, indeed. Do you have any idea what girls face in school? How about sexual harassment stats? This is not hyperbole. We have seen a number of cases very recently of young girls who were raped and then later victimized online. It’s real. It’s not hyperbole. And kids have a hard time admitting it when it happens. And I am no mother hen – I am an informed, and empowered mother lion, who knows better than to just blithely trust my child’s health to a drug that may or may not be right for her just because a pack of preening progressives say so. Giving this kind of medication over the counter to children is inappropriate. The president is the father of two girls….holy cow – maybe he gets it , too. It’s a pity that that progressives are using this issue as a crazy litmus test for progressiveness.
Exactly! Which is why girls should get those plan B pills ASAP so they don’t have to carry their rapists baby. I do not doubt you are a mother lion, you still will be if Plan B is over the counter, but what about the girls who dont have mother lions? That’s the question, and sadly they can’t wait to get good parents, they need the pills now and they need control over their bodies now.
I don’t mean to be rude, but if you’re interested in making sure girls aren’t being coerced, denying them the ability to make their own choices about reproductive choice seems an awful strange way to show it.
Let’s say you discuss, educate and engage your daughter about Plan B. You tell her you’re concerned she might get cancer, or be harmed in some other way. You discuss the risks, the challenges and let her know you don’t want her to take the drug. If she says she doesn’t care, she wants to take it anyway, what right do you have to deny her? The fact that your her parent? Sorry, I don’t buy it.
People, not women and men, have a right to self determination – that doesn’t start when they’re 18 or when they’re mature enough to make a good decision. It starts when they have the ability to make decisions. Your only right as a parent is help them make those decisions. Good for you if your kid engages with you about these decisions, but to deny medical services to a person whose parent doesn’t, well to me that’s coercion.
And where she is coming from, I will disagree that this will prevent these kinds of conversations. Young women that trust their parents will turn towards them, those that would fear being coerced by them or that they cannot have these conversations will now have the freedom to avoid the terrible costs of unintended pregnancy, without resorting to abortion, and without requiring the permission of a parent or a judge who might not be sympathetic with their predicament.
Under either scenario, the scenario where Obama’s cave to the religious right is upheld or the scenario where science and evidence based health care policy is determined free of politics, you are more than able to have these conversations with your kids, warn them of the risks, and make them aware. Basically good parents have nothing to fear from this, the status quo is unchanged, the conversations you should be having will be happening regardless of Plan Bs availability. The only losers in this are well intentioned but ignorant parents like my future in laws, bad parents, and right wing judges. Thats my take anyway.
Prior to the age of consent a girl can SAY she wants to have sex… she can beg, plead and swear up and down on a stack of bibles three ways from Sunday that she is ready and willing.
It’s still rape.
A boy can can do likewise and take her ‘willingness’ for consent. She can affirm to the entire world that she’s doing what she wants of her own free will.
It’s still rape.
And it will continue to be rape so long as there continues to be questions surrounding impulse control, decision making and emotional and psychic maturity of children. So what if some teens develop faster? You don’t like the blanket prohibition because it’s unfair to that tiny subset of teens who are ready? Tough. The opposite is worse: it’s not simply unfair to those who aren’t ready, it’s often tragic.
I really am no longer getting where this conversation is going. Are you saying girls under 15 that get raped deserve the fates of their unwanted pregnancies? I am 99% certain you are NOT saying that, but I honestly do not see how making Plan B over the counter causes more rapes, if anything it will prevent more unintended pregnancies from rape.
It’s birth control, I do not know the last time you’ve been in a high school or middle school Petr, but you can get condoms there. Plan B is a very powerful contraceptive used after the fact, but it does the same thing a condom does. It’s not a form of abortion and in many cases, it’s the only thing preventing girls who are victims of date rape or were too drunk to use protection or were pressured into not using it or lied to about the male using it from getting pregnant. You admitted in the post above that these are real problems real girls face from real boys. I don’t trust 15 year old boys either, which is exactly why I trust girls under 15 to have access to Plan B and why I feel that is an essential right they have. Who is this threatening?
…but when a girl is raped she should get to the ER immediately and Plan B should be administered there along with everything else you do with a rape victim. The rest of your scenarios are examples of exactly why I believe that teenagers of both sexes should adopt a just say no attitude.
Jeesh.
Most girls who will want this will not be victims of rape. For those who are, the approach advocated by you and our “mother lion” (and their male counterparts) only compounds the trauma they are already going through.
As jconway has observed, while I’m sure that justice4all is fine and loving parent, a great many “mother lions” most assuredly are NOT. There are a host of good and very strong reasons why progressives have rejected various “parental notification” laws for decades, and those reasons all apply here as well.
Christopher, your advocacy of this draconian and coercive measure only demonstrates that your beliefs are utterly unenlightened by experience — both as a father and as a lover.
The notion that “just say no” should be enforced by the threat of unwanted pregnancy or abortion is sheer right-wing madness. Unless you also advocate equally strongly for similar restrictions on condoms, it is sexist as well.
I actually do advocate just as strong responsibility on the part of the male party. However the two methods are not equivalent – one is a drug, the other isn’t. This should be subject to the same medical standards as anything else, presumed to be a free choice for adults, but presumed to involve the parent for minor children. I’m not advocating harder to access necessarily, but not easier either. Rapes need to be reported immediately and this is something that can be done at that point. I would suggest that learning what I have about the potential consequences and seeing people I know live thruogh them I am in fact very enlightened about what happens and needs to happen, thank you very much. Just because we disagree does not make me a draconian right-winger. In fact I think my way is ultimately quite liberating and therefore progressive in its way.
I won’t stop comparing Plan B to a condom, because they are both contraceptives. The fact that one is a drug is relevant ONLY to the safety question. If it is safety that concerns you, then parental approval should be required for a person under 16 to buy aspirin. You seem to agree that that’s absurd — it is equally absurd to restrict Plan B. The FDA says so, and the courts say so.
It is your “abstinence” argument that provokes my characterization of your position as right-wing. I stand by that characterization. It your suggestion that Plan B should be available only to rape victims and only from the ER that is not only draconian, but in fact — at least to me — a bit creepy. Most girls who will want Plan B are not rape victims (unless you are talking about statutory rape). Most often, they will be girls who for a variety of reasons end up having consensual unprotected sex. To force them to go the ER — or risk becoming pregnant and/or have an abortion — IS draconian and coercive.
as if it’s something that just happens. That there is no consciencious decision making involved. There was either an affirmative decision to have sex or it’s rape, nothing in between. As has been pointed out you do need parental permission for some medication is a school context and they’ve cracked down on cold medication of all things because someone figured out how to turn it into something more potent. I am not an expert in the relative safety of various medications, but I do standby the right of lawmakers to restrict the sale of various products to minors.
I respect you Christopher, and usually agree, but that is a stunningly ignorant statement of the lived reality of teen sexuality these days.
I’m coming around to allowing for a mistake, but in my book the absence of an explicit yes should be taken as a no, that includes if one party is too drunk (which would also be nice if didn’t happen but I digress) to give true consent. Any degree of non-consent, reluctance, etc. should be interpreted as a cue to back off.
There is no in-between from the eyes of the law, which is why first day at college we had to watch skits and movies about ‘no means no’. That was also hammered home in high school sex ed as well.
I am saying though, there are plenty of situations where teens might not be going into a situation thinking they will be doing anything and then they do. It’s why abstinence only has such a spectacular fail rate. And why ‘just say no’ is a terrible approach to reducing drug use or teen pregnancy, and why it’s used by the ‘personal responsibility’ crowd to justify inhumane prohibition policies on drugs and reproductive freedom.
…my approach to abstinence is not the “abstinence only” method you are probably thinking of. That IS the right-wing dogma Tom has often referred to. They preach abstinence without any backup, room for questions, discussion of the reasons, facts, science, etc, usually resorting to a variation of the Bible says so and outright lies like birth control causes cancer or somesuch. I am more than comfortable with the idea that teaching the facts and allowing for questions and discussion will lead to the right conclusions. I still don’t understand teens not thinking they will do something then they do. You make it sound like starting with a kiss or a dance there is some momentum that is unstoppable and I don’t buy it. Until something happens you have a choice for it not to happen. You can say this is where I draw the line and if you are not allowed to draw that line it is rape. This isn’t speculation on my part; I and plenty of my peers managed. Always keep a clear head, know your values, limits, etc. and you will be fine. There are a whole host of things we don’t allow or strongly advise kids not to do and point out there are consequences. There’s no reason sex should not be one of those things.
Some kids will still not listen and experiment and I don’t see why they have to get a parent, possibly an ignorant or unsympathetic one, or a judge, and west and south of 495 we don’t know if they would be sympathetic either, to get a simple form of contraception. It’s a powerful short term dose of the same medicine used in the pill to flush out a potentially fertilized embryo. And I am not arguing kids shouldn’t be experimenting with drugs, sex, and alcohol before 18-but they do. And we can hold them to higher standards while offering humane and safe medical treatments for times that they don’t. That is all I am arguing.
I never said anything remotely resembling the above statement. Never. Never have. Never will. Not the argument. You are carrying baggage from an entirely separate argument unto this one.
Statutory rape is a crime. It is a crime because our society has deemed young, impulsive, impressionable and still developing girls and boys as UNABLE to make the decision. The boy cannot ask and the girl cannot answer. They are LEGALLY barred from making the decision because WE do not trust them to make the decision in an informed, sober-minded and SAFE manner. We do not trust young men to refrain from predatory behavior and we do not trust young women to be able to defend themselves, whilst alone, against those predators. And the IMPLICATIONS of LEGALLY banning that SPECIFIC decision is that we LEGALLY cannot then allow decisions that follow from the breach of that ban. It can’t, and ought not to be done.
You’re position is that, well, some teens can handle it. BFD. I say the corner case does not define the general case and, further, I would rather err on the side of caution. At some point between the onset of puberty (which is not, itself, a point in time but a spectrum) and legal majority, and this point differs for every child and every circumstance, maturity emerges and we begin to trust them to make these decisions. Some get there early. Others never get there. But legally, nobody gets there prior to the age of consent. It’s a simple as that.
You continually act as if it is all OK, except under the same circumstances in which it is not OK for an adult… But you are missing the point: statutory rape is a law because we say, deliberately and clearly, that children aren’t able to make that decision. THEY ARE NOT ADULTS. AND THEY DO NOT HAVE THE SAME FREEDOMS AND LIBERTIES ADULTS HAVE. Thus, you cannot hold them to the same standard and you cannot use the same points of reference. It DOES NOT MATTER a whit whether the child was drunk. It does not matter if she was “pressured”. At that age we simply SAY SHE WAS PRESSURED. We ASSUME coercion and we have set that assumption into law. If you want to think of it as the child (boy or girl) is ALWAYS in a state akin to being legally drunk, if that makes if easier for you, or, put another way, always in a state of impressionable impulsivity akin to that found under the influence, fine, but the point remains: we say children cannot make the decision AND therefore they cannot make the decisions that derive from the decision also. I’m very sorry if you don’t like that, or feel somehow upset by that, but there it is.
You are ‘protecting’ them after the fact. So, in affect, you are threatening them. The damage, if any, is done well before you would step in and hand them a pharmaceautical cure. You can clean up the loose bits and salve your conscience and say, “well, at least she won’t have to deal with long term consequences’, (without proof you may say this…) but you don’t know. What you want, from what you say here, is that everything is made all tidy and the 15 year old boy can go back to being a 15year old boy and the 15 year old girl can… what? Move on with her life?
That’s the most bizarre reasoning I’ve seen in a long time. Some significant portion of those teenage girls that the statutory-rape laws fail to protect are unable to negotiate the hurdles involved in ending an unwanted pregnancy. Your rigid position sentences those kids to parenthood.
My position is not the rigid, and blanket, denial you’ve insinuated here. No where have I said that we should not allow adequate and appropriate medical care to anybody, be they victim of rape or no. I sentence no one. My position is the one that recognizes the difficulties in the situation and I make no pretense to solutions save the clear truth that ease of access, while certainly the tidiest solution, remains inadequate.
What you’re refusing to talk about is the underlying rationale for age of consent laws. If we assume any decision regarding sex and children has to be made or approved by an adult, then what your saying follows.
Adolescents makes these decisions all the time without input from their parents, however. Maybe they shouldn’t, but they do. I want public policy that supports those children, and recognizes the reality that lots of parents are awful and stupid. In my mind, that’s lots and lots of sex ed, pretty much unfettered access to birth control and age of consent laws that try to treat children as close to adults as they can. I’m comfortable with the inconsistency because I think it produces the best result.
No. Even if a parent says “go ahead and get yourself laid all you want,” it’s still rape if the child is under the age of consent. There’s no difference to split here: The parent can’t waive the law any more than the child can. The parent can’t give the child permission to rob a bank or sell drugs. Parenthood doesn’t work that way. Some states require parental consent, and/or notification, for abortion services but no state that I know of waives the age of consent for sexual activity: that’s shade to close to prostitution I should think.
You all CONTINUE to treat this as a possible decision that the child can make if only the stars align or puberty happens or parents consent or… I don’t know what… but it’s not that way at all. The child can’t make the decision. The boy can’t do it. The girl can’t do it. They can’t make the decision and there is nobody who can make the decision for them. The law defines them as incapable of making the decision, or, conversely, the law defines adults in terms of the ability to safely and forthrightly make decisions that have physical, social, mental, emotional and moral ramifications. I happen to think that it is a good law.
The implications are clear: if they CANNOT make the decisions, yet still the act is accomplished, then they HAVE NOT made a decision but, rather, are at the mercy of somebody else: the decision was made from them or, more likely, at the point of their, or some other adolescents, lack of impulse control. This is not a basis to say they made a decision. You would, it seems, treat it like a clear decision. It is never clear. The law defines it as impossible to be clear. Everything about all my experiences, both as a parent and one time adolescent myself, with three brothers, tells me that there is great wisdom in this definition.
You wrote:
Wrong. If you truly believe this, you too are living in la-la-land. Adolescents make this decision ALL THE TIME — to the tune of 20-30%. Perhaps they’re making bad decisions. Perhaps they’re making uninformed decisions. Perhaps it’s decision driven by impulse. They are, however, making a decision. They make a decision when they go his or her house when the parents are out. They make a decision when they find a secluded place in the woods. They make a decision when they start kissing, they make a decision when they take off their clothes.
This “good law” is leading you to argue that pregnancy is better than unsupervised Plan B administration for a 15 year old girl. In my view, that absurd outcome should suggest that you’ve divided by zero somewhere in your “proof”.
Oh, and by this argument, shouldn’t condoms also be similarly restricted?
No. No. No again. You. Don’t. Get. It. It is NOT a law that says “if you decide in one way, and not the other, you are breaking the law.” No. No. and again, no. It is a law that says “You do not have the emotional, physical, mental and moral acumen to make the decision.” The law does not say you can make the decision and suffer the consequences. The law says you cannot make the decision. because you don’t have the full rights of citizenship and adulthood.
The 20 -30% who are “making the decision” are NOT MAKING ANY DECISION but are being coerced. It may feel like they are making a decision. They are not. It may look and act like a real decision. it is not. Legally, it is not. Emotionally, physically and mentally it is not. Legally, and also according to the rationale behind the legality, they are being coerced. There is no circumstances, legally or otherwise for a person WHO CANNOT CONSENT, to say they consented. It is an impossibility. They were coerced. Again, since they are not adults the coercion is not the same, in scope, range, manner and application as that which would coerce an adult. The standards are different. That you dismiss 20-30% of children being coerced as merely them making decision, well, I find that troubling.
I have never once argued that either pregnancy or plan B adminstration is either better or worse. I make no such arguments. My arguments go deeper and they question the core of the issue: pregnancy and plan B for a 15 year old girl in Massachusets are both outcomes of rape. There is no circumstances in which a 15 year old girl who is either pregnant or in need of plan B WAS NOT RAPED.
Let me be completely and totally clear: I would rather that 15 year old girls not be raped. I would also rather that 15 year old boys not be rapists. I think that ‘Plan B” though tidier for you and your conscience is no less a burden for that 15 year old girl WHO WAS RAPED than a pregnancy. You can think it cleaner and more… I don’t know… absolving, or something… but there is no indication that such is the case and dealing with the physical consequences of a rape doesn’t begin to deal with possible emotional and mental issues that will arise.