Plan B: Need Doctor Rx For Teens

[dales]

Yannow, what REALLY SUCKS is that the males get the jollies but the women must suffer "collateral damge".

God...why is that?

[Scooter]

Because God is a man?

[dales]

That must be it!

[loCAtek]

Really, how so?

Seems men don't want to acknowledge the feminine side of God; and why is that?

[Scooter]

When I still went to church, I used to give workshops on inclusive language where I would list all of the feminine references to God in the Bible, which most people had never heard of, so perhaps you should preach other than to the choir.

Oh yeah, and maybe learn to recognize a joke.

[BoSoxGal]

From what I've heard, the side effects are no picnic, either.

I can attest to that.

I took Plan B (then called morning after pill) in college following a condom failure with my then BF. It's basically taking almost a whole months' worth of birth control in 48 hours' time; you can imagine the effects of that much hormone disruption. I felt absolutely awful - but relieved to not risk a pregnancy I was unprepared for.

I think if the medical people who know and the FDA are willing to allow Plan B without prescription, Obama should not have overridden that determination. I'm sure that the risks of Plan B to a reasonably healthy young woman are minimal compared to pregnancy.

[Beer Sponge]

That's how a lot of teens are spreading HIV and other infections these days.

True, merely relating what worked back in my day. I also advocate 'Wrap it before you tap it'!

[loCAtek]

When I still went to church, I used to give workshops on inclusive language where I would list all of the feminine references to God in the Bible, which most people had never heard of, so perhaps you should preach other than to the choir.

Oh yeah, and maybe learn to recognize a joke.

That's relevantly so ironic. But ThX.

[rubato]

Obama is the father of two young (but rapidly growing) daughters. One suspects that he is influenced by the difficulty of imagining them behaving sexually as adults.

And when I look at the totality of his actions on sexual mores, dawdling on "don't ask don't tell", equivocating on same-sex marriage, and this I get the impression that his personal beliefs really are more centrist than liberal.

yrs,
rubato

[Scooter]

That's relevantly so ironic. But ThX.

Oh, so it was the bottle speaking for you again then. No problem.

[rubato]

An interesting commentary:

_________________________
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/12/q ... -2001.html

Quote of the Day: December 11, 2001

"The emergence of the blue family paradigm came with women's ability to control the timing of pregnancy and childbirth. For those with the resources and discipline to take advantage of these techniques, family formation occurs at the point when adults can be expected to do the right thing--and have the emotional and financial resources to manage their children--with a minimum of external assistance. The prescription to delay family formation until after graduate-schoola age, however, carries little suasion for those who will not complete college. Red families would accordingly like to reinforce parental control over wayward teens and make it harder to escape the consequences of improvident conduct. Yet, the most likely effect of restricting the avaiability of the morning-after pill to 18-year-olds is to increase the number of non-marital pregnancies, and the emphasis on abstinence education has dramatically raised the odds that a poor African-American teen will have her first sexual experience without any information about contraception. The irony is that blue families, who overwhelmingly oppose these policies, simply accompany their daughters to the pharmacy while more conservative families--with many minority parents disapproving of the measures--disproportionately bear the consequences..."

--Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, Red Families, Blue Families
_________________________

yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

Among the many words that Liberals are striving to make meaningless are "adults," "children," and "parents."

If it is possible to make this drug inaccessible to CHILDREN, for God's sake, then it is appropriate to do so. The decision of whether to use this drug should be made by a PARENT, or if not a parent, then "Plan B" would be a physician who knows the child and family.

Children DO NOT NEED the free availability of a dangerous drug that will absolve them of responsibility for their poor choices. Ideed, the availability of such a drug would actually enourage irresponsible sexual behavior. I can hear the backseat conversation now: "Let's fuck; no need to use a condom, you can pop a pill in the morning!"

For the same reason why we do not give teenage boys instruction on how to drive while intoxicated or to drive at high speed (since "they will do it anyway"), we, as a society, should not make this drug readily available to CHILDREN.

[Scooter]

The difference between decisions about contraception (and abortion for that matter) and any other sort of medical decision made on behalf of a child, is that a parent's refusal of permission risks saddling not them, but their child, with the legal responsibility for caring for the life that results. No one has the right to impose such an obligation on another person without their consent. If the child needs medical treatment or school supplies or a new pair of shoes it is the child-parent who has to figure out how to pay for it, not the grandparents. Since the parents have zero responsibility for the consequences, they should have absolutely zero say in decisions intended to prevent or terminate a pregnancy.

[Andrew D]

Among the many words that Liberals are striving to make meaningless are "adults," "children," and "parents."

If it is possible to make this drug inaccessible to CHILDREN, for God's sake, then it is appropriate to do so. The decision of whether to use this drug should be made by a PARENT, or if not a parent, then "Plan B" would be a physician who knows the child and family.

Children DO NOT NEED the free availability of a dangerous drug that will absolve them of responsibility for their poor choices. Ideed, the availability of such a drug would actually enourage irresponsible sexual behavior. I can hear the backseat conversation now: "Let's fuck; no need to use a condom, you can pop a pill in the morning!"

For the same reason why we do not give teenage boys instruction on how to drive while intoxicated or to drive at high speed (since "they will do it anyway"), we, as a society, should not make this drug readily available to CHILDREN.

But how do we define "children"?

The age at which a young woman can obtain this medication without anyone else's permission is now seventeen. A sixteen-year-old young woman cannot obtain this medication without someone else's permission.

But a sixteen-year-old young woman is marriageable. Yes, at least in California, parental consent is required for the marriage; but once the young woman is married, she is no longer under the control of her parents. And if I remember California family law correctly (it is not among my areas of practice), she can get a divorce while still sixteen, and she will still be free of her parents' control.

Shouldn't the age at which someone can get a medication intended to prevent pregnancy bear some rational relationship to the age at which that person can get pregnant?

This whole business of referring to post-pubescent minors as "children" is rather silly. People do not spring suddenly from infancy into adulthood. They grow, often gradually but also often in spurts, into adulthood, physically and mentally.

We live in a world in which sixteen- fifteen- and fourteen-year-old mothers are easy to find. Indeed, they are difficult to avoid encountering, and in many parts of our world, sixteen-year-old mothers are more common than sixteen-year-old virgins. Treating sixteen-year-old young women as if they were six-year-old girls is not sound public policy.

[BoSoxGal]

What's more, only a generation or two ago, marriage at the age of 14, 15, 16 was relatively common - certainly a few more generations and it was the norm.

I'm not saying that is great, but certainly the infantilization of teenagers in our society is not necessarily a positive thing. 'Children' of teenaged years in most of the world are afforded a great deal more respect with regard to ability to engage in mature decision making.

[loCAtek]

Actually, in the past, marriage in the teenage years was more the consequence of there being little to no contraception; than the maturity of the teenagers. Sex was going to result in pregnancy; marriage was just a way to provide for the inevitable child; marriage for mature love was very uncommon.

Today, in other countries, it's usually just the bride who is a teenager, and she is married to a much older man.

[BoSoxGal]

Brides were almost always younger than grooms, because grooms had to establish themselves before supporting a wife and children. And youthful marriage was not about birth control; many girls were betrothed far earlier but didn't have sex with the intended until marriage (but some still got pregnant accidentally in lust or love-based relationships).

Marriage at 14, 15, or 16 marked the end of a young woman's formal education. And for women of families of means, by that age they'd learned Greek, Latin, French, literature, music, etc.

Or if their families were working class, they'd been working for years already.

The leisurely childhood is a purely modern invention and not altogether positive, IMHO.

[dgs49]

Adolescence is a relatively recent invention - and not necessarily a good one.

It's not so many generations ago when a boy of 13 was expected to either start working on the farm, start an apprenticeship, or go to the university. Girls of that age were taught how to cook, sew, and perform other household obligations, so that they would be ready for marriage by 15-16. And I'm sure those general principles prevail in some third-world countries, because they are largely determined by biology. A 13-14 year old boy is strong enough to do manual work and capable of significant learning, and a girl of 13 can have children, albeit with more difficulties than older girls.

But in this country, most 18-year-olds are "children" in every sense but the purely chronological. Indeed, there are children in my extended family who are well into their 20's and even 30's.

My brain just puckers when I read that "withholding" this drug from a child is "condemning" her to one thing or another. My God, what a twisted viewpoint. As though holding someone responsible for their behavior is a form of punishment. As though a living human being has no more significance than a pencil mark on a piece of paper than can be erased from existence with no thought other than whether it's existence might inconvenience someone.

Fucked up.

[BoSoxGal]

As though a living human being has no more significance than a pencil mark on a piece of paper than can be erased from existence with no thought other than whether it's [sic] existence might inconvenience someone.

Fucked up.

If you really feel that way, I should think you would be supportive of easy access to Plan B. It would likely prevent hundreds of thousands of abortions.

[dgs49]

bigskygal, I respectfully disagree. And here's why...

When The Pill became commercially available, we were told that it would revolutionize American families and sexual life. There would be no more "unwanted" children or "unplanned" children (except among Catholics and Mormons), because with this quick, easy, painless product, there was simply no reason for a woman to become pregnant by accident (excepting cases of rape).

But in the years after its first availability, illegitimacy exploded, especially in the African American community.

And when abortion first became "legal," the same promises were made. No more unwanted children.

And while The Pill is not exactly free and abortions are not exactly available at the Drive-thru window, their availability is pretty much universal.

And yet we still have millions of children born every year to people who have no particular desire to have children - and certainly to people who have no business having children. And the cases of child abuse and child neglect are ubiquitous - much, much more prevalent than they were before the invention of The Pill, or the ready availability of abortion.

Thus, there is no reason on earth to suppose that the ready availability of this new means of preventing pregnancy will have any measurable effect on the number of "unwanted" or "accidental" births in this country. People - and in particular young girls - will simply start behaving even more irresponsibly, with some of the pregnancies blocked by this pill, but many more of them going forward through carelessness or neglect.

What I am supportive of is a national campaign to discourage irresponsible sexual behavior by whatever means are at our disposal, and to discourage people from having children that they are not prepared or able to nurture. Such a campaign, in conjunction with responsible use of "artificial" birth control might have the desired effects.

Making this pill readily available (OTC) will, as I speculated above, simply encourage more irresponsible behavior, particularly among young people who should not be engaging in reproductive behavior in the first place.