Obama personally endorses restriction on Plan B, morphs into Dubya before stunned press corps
As Liss at Shakesville observes, “not only does the President support Sebelius’ shocking move to limit reproductive rights, he is using his daughters to defend his failure to support choice.” This was his response to reporters today when they asked him if he supported the ban:
THE PRESIDENT: I will say this, as the father of two daughters. I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine. And as I understand it, the reason Kathleen made this decision was she could not be confident that a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old go into a drugstore, should be able — alongside bubble gum or batteries — be able to buy a medication that potentially, if not used properly, could end up having an adverse effect. And I think most parents would probably feel the same way.
So the expectation here is — I think it’s very important to understand that, for women, for those over 17, this continues to be something that you can go in and purchase from a drugstore. It has been deemed safe by the FDA. Nobody is challenging that. When it comes to 12-year-olds or 13-year-olds, the question is can we have confidence that they would potentially use Plan B properly. And her judgment was that there was not enough evidence that this potentially could be used improperly in a way that had adverse health effects on those young people.
Q: Do you fully support the decision?
THE PRESIDENT: I do.
I don’t need to point out what phony asinine bullshit this is. Yeah, god forbid that an 11-year-old rape victim should get her hands on Plan B without Daddy (who may be her rapist) knowing about it. Better for her to just OD on Tylenol or maybe cook up some meth with Sudafed.
I do think it’s worth pointing out that all this talk of 11-year-olds is deflecting attention from the primary victims of this ban. Those are the girls who are 16 years old, 15 years old—prime age for unexpected pregnancy through whatever means (consensual sex with boyfriend as well as rape and incest). Those are the girls who need Plan B the most, and who won’t be getting it.
It’s also worth pointing out that the Obama Administration’s position on Plan B is now identical to the Bush Administration’s. Which is why the Obama true believers are left with this:
64 Responses to “Obama personally endorses restriction on Plan B, morphs into Dubya before stunned press corps”
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Shannon Drury says:
No. No. NO! Don’t lump me in with you, Mr. President! I support my daughter’s right to bodily autonomy. I’m parenting towards an open relationship with her when she is older, but I can’t force it. Girls who aren’t telling their parents about buying Plan B usually have a pretty good reason.
December 8th, 2011 at 5:12 pm EST -
propertius says:
So this hypothetical 11 year-old can’t buy Plan B because it’s dangerous, can’t get an abortion because she’s a minor, but it’s perfectly okay with the self-proclaimed Feminist-in-Chief if she carries the pregnancy to term, gives birth, and tries to care for a child when she should be in middle school???
Well, it’s not like there’s any potential for harm in that, I suppose…
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Nell says:
Of course, we should ignore the opinions of an entire panel of medical experts working for the FDA and just go with Obama’s patriarchal gut.
Oh, and does it piss anybody else off that the fucking dickwad refers to the US Secretary of Health and Human Services as “Kathleen”?
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Nell says:
Uh-oh, did my bad words put me into moderation?
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Sandra S. says:
Yeah, because 11 year olds have never in history overdosed on cold medicine or asprin or fucking iron supplements or made themselves sick eating too much candy. Nope, it is ONLY contraceptive medicines that convert people into illiterate idiots incapable of following simple directions.
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myiq2xu says:
If an 11-year-old girl needs Plan B, the possible side effects are the least of her problems.
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Riverdaughter says:
Ok, who here is surprised by this? Raise your hands.
Consider yourself lucky that he didn’t require a prescription for every woman regardless of age. And it could only be filled if she had a toe from her minister and other elders in her family who she would have consulted for an up or down vote.This is Obama. The guy who got away with murdering a woman’s political career via liberal use of sexist remarks. “I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one”? “Hillary, when she’s periodically feeling bad…” Brush that dirt off your shoulders and give her the finger.
My question is where was Melissa in 2008? Wasn’t she one of the ones running around with her hair on fire saying that we were all doomed, DOOOMED, if a Republican won? Oh, and she made fun of us. Some sisterly solidarity.
Well, I hope she’s learned her lesson. Next time there’s a chance to vote for a feminist woman, she’d better fight tooth and nail for her.
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Riverdaughter says:
‘toe’ = ‘note’
Damn autocorrect. -
bluelyon says:
Not to mention that 10-14 year olds constiture a very small portion of all teen pregnancies.
Nice red herring Obama and Sebelius threw out there.
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bluelyon says:
Nell, don’t feel bad. My comments always go into moderation. Violet doesn’t know why. They just do.
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Carmonn says:
Yes, but nowhere does he describe the putative 11 and 12-year-old as “pregnant.” The bubble gum/misuse references are designed to exploit squeamish middle-class parents’ fears that their daughters will be lined up around the block buying endless supplies of Plan B to use to get high, too. Up market on red herrings today.
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Cyn says:
“Well, I hope she’s learned her lesson. Next time there’s a chance to vote for a feminist woman, she’d better fight tooth and nail for her.
December 8th, 2011 at 6:14 pm EST”Riverdaugher, I hear you. It’s the main reason I stopped reading Shakesville or whatever it is called now. Amazing that some of us couldn’t see it. I will never understand what happened to some feminists in 2008.
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Violet Socks says:
Hey you guys, Melissa at Shakesville was a Hilary Clinton supporter in 2008.
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jjmtacoma says:
There were 137,000 pregnancies in girls 10-14 years old over the 12 years ending in 2002. About 10 or 11 thousand per year.
The CDC data (for girls 10 – 14 years of age) show that 2/5 will have live birth, 2/5 will have induced abortion and 1/6 of babies will die. I couldn’t find good data for maternal mortality in this age group. They do have higher rates of eclampsia.
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Cleaver says:
Violet, thank you for that clarification about Melissa. She certainly was a Hillary Clinton supporter in 2008.
Also, puberty has been coming earlier to many girls. Some people say its earlier onset is due to phytoestrogens in the environment. Whatever the reason, it is not inconceivable for 10 and 11 year olds — that is, children — to become pregnant. And if 10 and 11 years olds are in the minority among pregnant youngsters, that is irrelevant when it comes to their health and welfare.
I have no doubt that in many cases a 10 or 11 year old’s pregnancy is the result of rape by a family member or another adult the child knows. Plan B makes it easier than ever to cover up and continue such abuse.
In any case, this decision by Secretary Sibelius (and President Obama) necessarily gets someone older than 10 or 11 involved when a child of that age becomes pregnant. That person might be a school counselor, a teacher, or even an older sister. Isn’t that better than having a 10 or 11 year old face and abort a pregnancy alone?
But, really, isn’t safe, legal abortion a better option for a child than giving her an abortifacient drug that has not been tested on children (and on very young women’s still developing reproductive systems)?
I’m no Obama fan. I’m sick and tired of him using women’s reproductive rights and freedom as a bargaining chip with the rightwing. I think he’s doing that here, too. But I also think, uncharacteristically, that in this case he made the right call.
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Violet Socks says:
an abortifacient drug that has not been tested on children (and on very young women’s still developing reproductive systems)?
But I thought we were talking about Plan B.
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Carmonn says:
Cleaver, are you perhaps thinking of RU-486? Plan B most certainly does not get anyone involved “when a child of that age becomes pregnant.” Plan B is emergency contraception which prevents pregnancy by preventing fertilization or impeding the release of an egg, if the woman is already pregnant it won’t have any effect. It’s similar to a high dose birth control pill except it contains progesterone instead of a combination of progesterone and estrogen like the Morning After Pill.
I don’t know about you, but I really don’t think a surgical abortion (44 states in the US currently have parental consent/notification laws, by the way) or childbirth for an 11-year-old is such a wonderful alternative to simply preventing pregnancy in the first place.
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Carmonn says:
Sorry Dr. Socks, crossposted.
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Cleaver says:
Violet, I’m anything but a wingnut (though I notice you’ve removed that characterization since I first read your response to my earlier comment). I’m a woman and a leftist and a longtime feminist, and for decades I’ve spent my time and my money working hard for women’s abortion rights and sexual/reproductive rights in general.
I am sorry that my language displeased you, but I think it was accurate. Perhaps our semantic difference hinges on my understanding of pregnancy as beginning with fertilization of the ovum (that is, with conception), which takes place in the fallopian tube; you (and Carmonn) may see pregnancy as beginning with the ovum’s implanation or with some other physiological event.
Anyway, as we know, Plan B can work in several ways. It can prevent the release of an egg from the ovary in the first place. Or, if an egg has already been released, it can prevent fertilization from taking place in the fallopian tube. In these two instances, Plan B is accurately described as “emergency contraception.”
And if it happens that a woman (or a child) takes Plan B after an egg has been fertilized in the fallopian tube — that is, after conception — but before the egg has been implanted in the lining of the uterus, the drug irritates the endometrium and prevents implantation. At that point, the embryo is rejected. In these circumstances, Plan B aborts the pregnancy, thus acting as an abortifacient.
And if you don’t like that word, fine.
My point is that I don’t think Plan B should be available over the counter to children. We don’t know enough (or, frankly, anything at all) about how Plan B affects an 11 year old’s reproductive system. (Did you know that it takes the female reproductive system 28 years to mature fully?)
I’m not saying that Plan B should never be given to anyone 17 and under. But the requirement for a prescription in these circumstances means that someone else — a doctor, at the minimum, but someone other than the child in question — necessarily becomes involved in the decision about whether the child should take Plan B. To me, that seems necessary, not only for medical reasons for but another, more important reason: that a child is by definition too young to consent to activity that can make her pregnant, and at least one adult (other than a rapist) needs to be involved in the situation. If it does nothing else, the requirement for a Plan B prescription meets that need.
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Violet Socks says:
Violet, I’m anything but a wingnut (though I notice you’ve removed that characterization since I first read your response to my earlier comment).
Yes, I decided saying your comment sounded wingnuttish was a bit too snarky. But honestly, it does.
Plan B is not an abortifacient. It prevents pregnancy. If you’re so concerned about the reproductive health of an 11-year-old, why on earth do you want her to have to have an abortion or go through pregnancy, rather than simply prevent the pregnancy in the first place? I’m sorry, but that makes no sense. Rather than have a girl take an
estrogenprogestin pill—which, contrary to your assertions, has been studied for years and found to be safe—you would rather her get pregnant and either have an abortion or carry the pregnancy to term, both of which alternatives you find less alarming than the terrible prospect of an 11-year-old swallowing anestrogenprogestin pill without her Daddy knowing it.This is the reason that decisions like this should be made in light of science and medicine (which the FDA did) and not in light of prejudice, moral panic, and basic ignorance about how the medication works.
(Edited by me because I mistyped estrogen when I meant progestin, my bad, that’s what I get for posting when I’m exhausted. — VS)
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Violet Socks says:
Perhaps our semantic difference hinges on my understanding of pregnancy as beginning with fertilization of the ovum (that is, with conception), which takes place in the fallopian tube; you (and Carmonn) may see pregnancy as beginning with the ovum’s implanation or with some other physiological event.
You do realize that this is a far-right Christianist viewpoint that is not supported by medical science, yes? I mean, the godbags think every sperm is sacred, and if you’re actually counting pregnancy as starting in the fallopian tubes, then we’re all potentially shedding babies every month we have our periods (assuming we’ve had sex).
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Violet Socks says:
A little refresher course from Guttmacher: The Implications of Defining When a Woman Is Pregnant.
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quixote says:
(Erm, re Shakesville… I was posting there at the time. Liss did write some very good Clinton posts. She was also very “on board” with promoting Obama, which increased with the increasing pressure on all leftists to toe the line. I had several posts regarding Obama’s record that I asked whether she would mind me posting. (I had the sense quite early on that discordant notes weren’t felt to be helping, and it’s her blog.) Turned out she preferred not. Those posts are on my blog, but that’s truly the one that nobody reads. So, anyway, this is a longwinded way to say that Riverdaughter seems to me to be remembering fairly accurately, even if she doesn’t give Liss enough credit for her early Clinton posts.)
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Sameol says:
To me, that seems necessary, not only for medical reasons for but another, more important reason: that a child is by definition too young to consent to activity that can make her pregnant, and at least one adult (other than a rapist) needs to be involved in the situation. If it does nothing else, the requirement for a Plan B prescription meets that need.
How does that follow? Most children are raped by adults over the age of 17 who can get Plan B and give it to the child. Children who have trusted adults in their lives will turn to them without this policy. Spending $50 for a single pill and dealing directly with the busybody town pharmacist who’s going to call Rapist Daddy and let him know anyway is an incredibly daunting experience for a solo 10 year old.
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Adrienne in CA says:
Well California voters have three times rejected initiatives that would have required minors to get parental consent for abortion. Now we have the same rationale foisted on us for emergency contraception that prevents pregnancy in the first place.
Thanks, Mr. President, for the big F-U.
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Toonces says:
Children who have trusted adults in their lives will turn to them without this policy.
Bingo. And children (and teenagers) who do not have trusted adults in their lives will attempt to deal with the situation on their own. Limiting their options will not force them to tell anyone. They’ll probably just buy Plan B (hopefully the real Plan B and not some other wonky prescription) from older kids or their social circle’s dealer.
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Violet Socks says:
Limiting their options will not force them to tell anyone.
Right. And it also doesn’t magically manifest a loving supportive home environment where Ozzie and Harriet will wisely guide their daughter.
For chrissake, an 11-year-old who needs Plan B is more likely than not to be in a situation where the adults in her life are the ones abusing her. Putting Plan B on the drugstore shelf would at least give her a minimum amount of bodily autonomy to control whether she becomes pregnant. It seems to me unbelievably cruel to deny her even that. No, sorry kid: your fate is entirely in the hands of the adults who are making your life hell. No escape for you! You’ll just have to get pregnant. And then maybe die from a self-induced abortion. Yippee.
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Violet Socks says:
Though I must reiterate that the hypothetical 11-year-old is still a marginal case. Most girls who need Plan B are not 11 years old. They’re 16, 15 years old.
There is simply no way in hell that a 16-year-old taking Plan B on her own is somehow worse—in any way, shape, or form—than that same 16-year-old becoming pregnant and facing either abortion or early motherhood. And those are the choices.
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Sameol says:
Right. And it also doesn’t magically manifest a loving supportive home environment where Ozzie and Harriet will wisely guide their daughter.
And it doesn’t turn the rest of the world into Mayberry, where everyone wants nothing more than to rescue abused kids, either. Not all doctors, cops, lawyers, school administrators, would be sympathetic to a pregnant tween or teen. You know how sympathetic to rape victims our country is not? So just hope you get one of the good ones instead of someone who views you as a slut, or fair game, or someone who deserves to be punished by pregnancy. And remember, the clock is ticking.
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Cleaver says:
They’ll probably just buy Plan B (hopefully the real Plan B and not some other wonky prescription) from older kids or their social circle’s dealer [emphasis added].
Well, that’s a problem, isn’t it? That, and the fact that Plan B apparently hasn’t been tested on very young girls.
. . . the hypothetical 11-year-old is still a marginal case. Most girls who need Plan B are not 11 years old. They’re 16, 15 years old.
It may be the rare 11-year-old girl who needs Plan B, but her rarity doesn’t make her “hypothetical.” Inconvenient? Yes. Let’s just pretend she doesn’t exist.
But if she refuses to be “hypothetical,” let’s look the other way and give her unsupervised, over-the-counter access to the hormones in Plan B. We’re a society of rugged individuals, so let’s leave the whole thing up to her. What could possibly go wrong?
And then let’s excoriate Kathleen Sebelius and Barack Obama for capitulating to the right-wing godbags.
Let’s do that even though our own fear of the right-wing godbags — as encapsulated in our concern about toeing the line when it comes to the political “implications of defining when a woman is pregnant” — keeps us running so scared that we reject common sense and intellectual honesty along with any meaningful sense of responsibility for young girls who should not be abandoned.
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Not your Sweetie says:
Riiiight! Because stupid laws were always good replacements for parents/children communication! And pregnancy is a way better outcome for a teen having sex than taking of a pill!
“That’s what feminism looks like” -
Carmonn says:
I don’t even know where to begin with this, all I’ll say is, even for the two people in the United States who actually believe that an abortion is preferable to simply preventing a pregnancy, they’ll also have heard of the ever-increasing, expensive and buredensome restrictions and obstacles women (nevermind children) outside of certain major urban centers face when trying to access these services.
There’s also the fact that even 11-year-olds understand the difference between Plan B and an abortifacient. Emergency contraception is one thing, but lots of children who don’t actually want to give birth would still have a much harder time with an abortion, on several levels. So maybe we should talk about how giving birth is “a better option” for a very young child than taking a high-dose birth control pill, because that’s ultimately what it would come down to in many or even most cases.
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Carmonn says:
“Burdensome,” sorry.
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Ciardha says:
Pregnancy for a female before her pelvic area is fully developed (which actually isn’t until around 25) ups the risk of childbirth death and/or permanent damage to her body- spinal injuries and more, and under age 16 that risk is even higher. the less developed the pelvic area is the higher the risk is- at 10-11 the pelvic area in most girls- even nowadays with the early onset of puberty, is virtually unchanged from prepubescence.
Even for adult women childbirth is more dangerous than even a late term abortion. Safe and legal early term abortions and the morning after pill pose virtually no risk at all.
Obama has just signed a death sentence for some girls under 18, just because they were raped or pressured into sex and became pregnant.
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Don Turman says:
Please excuse my poor attempt to coment on this-I have not comented on a blog before-But, I have a view of this subject matter that has had a major impact on my adult life.If my coment can change one person’s view on this subject-it will be worthwhile.
Why in 2011 is this still going on.Stop trying to control what a person may/or may not do with their own body. No matter what’s your own opinion is, IT’S YOUR OPINION ONLY!YOU DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT TO FORCE IT ON ANOTHER PERSON.
Along time ago, when I was young and did no know any better, I got a girl pregnant.There was no options-thus a shotgun marriage that lasted barely a year before a divorce. I lost my child-to this day, years later, those chains of events are still impacting my life.
One can always self analyze what I could have done different,being responsible would have helped.
If back then, a person had the choice whether or not to bring a new life into this world, My life, as well as other’s in the same sitution .might have turned out so much differently. -
Violet Socks says:
That, and the fact that Plan B apparently hasn’t been tested on very young girls.
Actually, Plan B has been thoroughly tested. It has been conclusively shown to be safer than many drugs available over the counter, like Tylenol, Advil, allergy medications, and so on. That’s why the block on Plan B has long been recognized as being purely political. When the FDA finally approved Plan B for OTC sales to everyone, it was because they were finally bowing to the science. And that’s why everyone (except you apparently) recognizes that Sebelius’s bullshit move is pure politics. There’s no medical reason for it.
If you’re concerned about children taking dangerous drugs OTC, then Plan B should be the least of your worries.
It may be the rare 11-year-old girl who needs Plan B, but her rarity doesn’t make her “hypothetical.”
Look up the word “hypothetical.”
We’re a society of rugged individuals, so let’s leave the whole thing up to her. What could possibly go wrong?
Actually, a lot less than could go wrong if the kid gets hold of Tylenol, Advil, Benadryl, or Robitussin. All OTC.
as encapsulated in our concern about toeing the line when it comes to the political “implications of defining when a woman is pregnant”
You know, if you started talking about toeing the line on the political implications of defining gravity, you couldn’t possibly sound more like a wingnut right now.
The Guttmacher link I provided gives a good rundown on the medical definition of pregnancy, and why, from a basic physiological perspective, implantation is the event that begins a pregnancy. You might read it.
Let’s do that even though our own fear of the right-wing godbags — — keeps us running so scared that we reject common sense and intellectual honesty along with any meaningful sense of responsibility for young girls who should not be abandoned.
Finally! After almost six years of blogging, someone has finally recognized that I am cowering in fear of godbags, intellectually dishonest, and lacking in any sense of responsibility for young girls.
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Cleaver says:
My niece, between the ages of 8 and 12, was sexually abused on a regular basis by the husband of her mother’s best friend. As she entered puberty, the abuse took the form of sexual intercourse.
My niece never told her mother or anyone else until she was 14, which was two years after the abuse ended. She didn’t tell her mother because her mother was/is mentally ill, and she didn’t want her mother to have another breakdown and end up in the hospital again. (And of course when she finally did tell her mother, her mother had another breakdown and ended up in the hospital again.)
Fortunately, my niece did not become pregnant at the age of 11 or 12. In fact, she just had her first child, at the age of 35. She is married to a fine man. With therapy, she has been able to use her terrible experience as a source of empathy and support for others, and she is now a volunteer for a rape-crisis center in our community.
But what if she had become pregnant at the age of 11 or 12? How would she, a traumatized child, have been served, in her numbed isolation, by the ability to self-medicate, unsupervised, with over-the-counter Plan B? Even if a walloping dose of hormones had proved to be medically safe, what kind of society implicitly tells a child that her unwanted pregnancy is her own little problem, to be solved on her own?
I agree with everything Ciardha says at #34. I don’t know what the answer is. But I’m sharing this history so you’ll know that my thoughts about this issue BEGIN with an 11-year-old girl pressured into having sex with a friendly neighborhood rapist — the same girl who some of you think is “hypothetical” and who most of you would blithely send off to the local pharmacy without medical advice, education, or supervision.
I think that pro-choice feminists taking meaningful responsibility for the welfare of young girls must ask why girls so young are having sex in the first place. And I think that, as much as possible, this question should be considered apart from questions of sexual freedom, and apart from the framework of women’s reproductive rights.
Everything is political, no? Including the medical consensus on when pregnancy begins. That definition is necessarily political, given the threats coming from the godbags. Otherwise, why publish a whole “special report” on the “implications” of how the beginning of pregnancy is defined? I am not threatened by the mainstream medical consensus on when pregnancy begins. That is because I have no fear whatsoever of defending abortion rights — or, for that matter, of calling the induced abortion of a pregnancy the induced abortion of a pregnancy, if it occurs under one scenario with Plan B.
Women’s reproductive rights are crucially important. I’ve spent many years of my life working to protect them. But it breaks my heart, and turns my stomach, that so many here are unable or unwilling to understand that the framework of women’s reproductive rights (and of threats to those rights) does not apply to 10- and 11-year-old girls.
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Don Turman says:
Yeaks! to clarify- In my statement IT’S YOUR OPINION ONLY!YOU DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT TO FORCE IT ON ANOTHER PERSON. I was referring any regulating government agency having a say on what a woman can or cannot do with their own body. I was NOT diszagreeing with Dr Socks-
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Violet Socks says:
Cleaver, you’re concern trolling now.
I’m very sorry about your neice. That is a tragic story. However, I must point out that if your neice had had Plan B, she wouldn’t have become pregnant. And if she had become pregnant, Plan B wouldn’t have had any effect.
Everything is political, no? Including the medical consensus on when pregnancy begins. That definition is necessarily political, given the threats coming from the godbags. Otherwise, why publish a whole “special report” on the “implications” of how the beginning of pregnancy is defined?
Actually, the medical consensus on when pregnancy begins is based on physiology. And the reason for publishing a special report was to address the trend by godbags to define pregnancy differently, the ulterior motive of said godbags being to restrict abortion as well as many forms of contraception (including the IUD and emergency contraception).
Your claim that you’ve spent years working to “protect women’s reproductive rights” is sounding more and more suspicious.
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Violet Socks says:
But what if she had become pregnant at the age of 11 or 12? How would she, a traumatized child, have been served, in her numbed isolation, by the ability to self-medicate, unsupervised, with over-the-counter Plan B? Even if a walloping dose of hormones had proved to be medically safe, what kind of society implicitly tells a child that her unwanted pregnancy is her own little problem, to be solved on her own?
This entire scenario is false. Plan B does nothing for pregnant people. If someone finds herself pregnant, then she’s pregnant, and the only choices at that point are abortion or carrying the child to term.
Plan B is emergency contraception, designed to be taken soon after unprotected sex. It prevents pregnancy from occurring.
To reiterate: the traumatized child who finds herself pregnant will get no help from Plan B. It’s not for her. It’s not for anyone who’s already pregnant.
Cleaver, if you really understand how Plan B works, then I have to wonder why you persist in spreading this false scare scenario of it as some kind of abortion pill.
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Unree says:
Cleaver, unless you have pharm credentials that we don’t know about, on a question of drug safety we should side with the FDA–a conservative agency that does NOT rush to support dangerous substances, especially when approving a substance has political downsides–rather than our craven president, who enjoys throwing women under the bus for no political gain, and his HHS minion.
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Violet Socks says:
I’m getting suspicious in my old age. It must be all that cowering in fear of godbags. At any rate, I’m starting to think Cleaver is deliberately spreading this disinformation about Plan B.
So, to clear things up a bit, here’s the deal: Plan B works by preventing ovulation. It’s basically a giant birth control pill. Years ago PZ Myers did a write-up explaining the science (Why the wingnuts hate Plan B):
Plan B gives women the ability to control, to a limited extent, when they will expel a gamete. In purely reproductive terms, it’s a bit like a male’s ability to control when he will ejaculate, or expel his gametes. That’s it. No fertilized zygotes are involved, so that level of the birth control debate isn’t even relevant. It’s simple, responsible, and safe. You’d have to be insane to object to Plan B.
The answer to why the wingnuts hate Plan B is not because it’s an abortifacient, which it’s not; it just gives women control over their own bodies’ ovulation timing. The horror!
Now, the FDA has always included the caveat that Plan B may also work by interfering with fertilization and possibly with implantation. But this is speculative. You can’t prove a negative, so you can’t prove that Plan B isn’t having some effect on implantation. But that’s not the mechanism that the pill is working on. It’s an anti-ovulation device, not an anti-fertilization or anti-implantation device. In fact, the hormone in Plan B can actually enhance rates of implantation.
Godbags, of course, insist that Plan B prevents or disrupts implantation, because that way they can attack it as an abortifacient (having already defined pregnancy as starting the moment sperm meets egg). But what does the science say? I’ll quote from the medical opinion published by James Trussell, the world’s leading expert on levonorgestrel, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, as quoted on the Religious Tolerance website (emphasis added):
“Published evidence clearly indicates that Plan B can interfere with sperm migration by altering the cervical and uterine environment, and that preovulatory use of Plan B usually suppresses the LH surge either completely or partially, which in turn either prevents ovulation or leads to the release of ova that are resistant to fertilization. Epidemiological evidence rules strongly against interruption of fallopian tube function by Plan B. Evidence that would support direct involvement of endometrial damage or luteal dysfunction in Plan B’s contraceptive mechanism is either weak or lacking altogether. Both epidemiologic and clinical studies of Plan B’s efficacy in relation to the timing of ovulation are inconsistent with the hypothesis that Plan B acts to prevent implantation.”
“Progestational drugs, including levonorgestrel, are used therapeutically in assisted reproduction because they increase the rate of successful implantation and pregnancy. That observation a priori reduces the likelihood that Plan B interferes with implantation; it even raises the counterintuitive but undocumented possibility that Plan B used after ovulation might actually prevent the loss of at least some of the 40% of fertilized ova that ordinarily fail spontaneously to implant or to survive after implantation.”
“[T]he ability of Plan B to interfere with implantation remains speculative, since virtually no evidence supports that mechanism and some evidence contradicts it. … [T]he best available evidence indicates that Plan B’s ability to prevent pregnancy can be fully accounted for by mechanisms that do not involve interference with postfertilization events.”
In other words, Plan B works by suppressing ovulation, and there is no evidence that it interferes with implantation.
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Cleaver says:
Violet, if you’ve read my comments, you know that I understand how Plan B works, and that I’m not primarily concerned with whether or not Plan B is an “abortifacient.” To my mind, that word was accurate in the one context where I used it. But I have no need to impose my definition of when pregnancy begins on you, and for the purposes of this discussion I’m perfectly willing to accept the mainstream medical definition of when pregnancy begins.
That’s because I don’t particularly care about when pregnancy begins. For me, a woman’s right to control her own body is absolute, so the question of when pregnancy begins is just a sideshow.
And for that reason, I’m not afraid to fight for women’s reproductive autonomy even though
attempts to legislatively impose the belief that pregnancy begins at fertilization . . . [have, in] the current debate over emergency contraception[,] moved the issue [of when pregnancy begins] back to center stage. . . .
What we really disagree on is whether the rights and freedoms appropriate to women and older teens are appropriately extended to kids 10 and 11 years old, especially when the exercise of those rights would give them (and their developing bodies) over-the-counter access to powerful hormones, on who knows how regular a basis. (And it’s illogical for you and others to keep insisting that Plan B is not dangerous because other, unregulated substances are allegedly more dangerous. As for “thorough testing” of Plan B with children of 10 and 11, I must have missed that link — could you post it again?)
In any case, would it hurt your brand of feminism to be a bit more open to diversity? Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if there were more feminists like me saying to the godbags, “Yes, I share your belief that human life begins at conception, and I do define conception as fertilization. But I also believe that a woman’s life and choices and reproductive freedom take precedence over a developing being’s putative right to life. Now suck on that, and let your God sort it out.”
For the record, I am agnostic on the question of God.
Peace out.
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Cleaver says:
I just tried to post a response to Violet’s last comment to me. But why bother. Maybe I’ve been banned now.
Shorter version: 10- and 11-year-old girls are chldren. And I do understand how Plan B works.
Peace out.
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Toonces says:
They’ll probably just buy Plan B (hopefully the real Plan B and not some other wonky prescription) from older kids or their social circle’s dealer [emphasis added].
Well, that’s a problem, isn’t it?
Uh, yes, that’s the point. They should have access to Plan B OTC so they know they are getting what they need, rather than Ritalin or somebody’s birth control or whatever.
I was smoking cigarettes and pot by the time I was 10. My mother did not know this until I was in my 20′s. Thank god I wasn’t raped at that age and didn’t have to deal with something as horrific as that. But if it did happen, I imagine my emotional maturity would have been such that A) I would believe I did something bad (especially if it happened in a coercive rather than violent way) and B) don’t tell anyone about this bad thing (especially if someone told me not to). Rape victims blame themselves. 10 year-olds don’t have the life experience to know about boundaries and the way adults should behave, etc. to able to know they didn’t do anything wrong (even if they wore makeup or were nice to their rapist once or whatever). You’re putting way too much on a 10 year-old to attempt to force them to find some adult they can trust and talk to about something they can’t really even fully comprehend. You know what kids/teens do when they can’t handle something? They go into denial. If you’ve followed cases where very young girls and young teens get pregnant, they’ll often hide the pregnancy up to the birth and then try to throw it away and pretend it didn’t happen.
It is utterly ridiculous to deny girls who are in perilous situations an easy way to prevent pregnancy. This is not about the ideal way it should be handled, it is about what actually happens and the way people (including young ones) actually behave. No one, not even us scary lefty sex-crazed loony feminists, is arguing that 10 year-olds should be having sex or are making “choices” the way adult women do.
Thanks Obama, for framing this for maximum emotional reactivity and minimal rational thinking. Asshole.
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Violet Socks says:
If an 11-year-old girl has sperm in her body, then it’s almost certainly because she’s been raped. (I’m sure there are cases where she’s had sex with an 11-year-old boy, in which case they’re both children and I have no idea what the legal status of that is.)
So, let’s just call the 11-year-old seeking Plan B what she most likely is: a rape victim. And a rape victim needs Plan B as a kind of self-defense. She’s already been physically and emotionally violated; now she needs a tool to stop the rapist’s sperm from, additionally, making her pregnant.
In that sense, Plan B is kind of like the hormonal equivalent of a karate kick to the rapist. It’s self-defense.
And yet we have people claiming that this simple form of self-defense is too dangerous (more dangerous than being raped? than being pregnant? than having an abortion?), and that the “responsible” thing to do is to withhold this self-defense mechanism from the 11-year-old rape victim.
The ugly irony here is that Plan B gives a female an opportunity to assert some control over her body; bodily control, of course, being the thing that the rapist violated. It boggles my mind that people think the best thing to do in that situation is to continue to deny the rape victim control over her own body.
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Toonces says:
Plan B gives a female an opportunity to assert some control over her body; bodily control, of course, being the thing that the rapist violated. It boggles my mind that people think the best thing to do in that situation is to continue to deny the rape victim control over her own body.
Exactly. And maybe that’s really the point. If girls that young get to feeling like they own their own bodies, that they’re people and not just a prop for male use, they could get pretty uppity by the time they’re adults and it would be much harder to undo. I mean, I can’t figure out what else the point would be to adding horror on top of horror as a way to show “care” for girls.
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gxm17 says:
Yes, Violet. It seems Obama’s Army has sent its Concern Troll Units out in force preaching the anti-choice gospel at any blog that dares take Obama to task for this despicable decision. IMO, Obama has done more damage to women’s rights and reproductive choice than any Republican president could’ve dreamed of. He has moved the debate so far right that I can’t see how we’ll ever manage to drag it back to center.
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paper dol says:
Obama is Bush 3.5, .and we are looking at his reinstall in 2012. Mittens will pull a John Kerry 2004 move …fight for the nomination and then lie down
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Sameol says:
Cleaver, I am desperately sorry for what happened to your niece.
If you look around, though, in the blogosphere, in RL, there is a lot of testifying by women who have been victims of childhood sexual abuse. And very, very few of them seem to be grateful to Obama, or to believe this policy would have helped them. Very much the opposite.
If anyone’s interested, anti-choicer who’s disgusted by the intellectual dishonesty of pretending that Plan B causes abortion:
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Violet Socks says:
Maybe I’ve been banned now.
No, you haven’t been banned. But I do find your comments bizarre and inappropriate.
Violet, if you’ve read my comments, you know that I understand how Plan B works
No, reading your comments has given me the strong impression that you do not know how Plan B works. You keep referring to a traumatized pregnant 11-year-old tottering off to the drugstore by herself to take a pill that will end her unwanted pregnancy. That’s not what Plan B does.
Plan B is simply a pill that females can take to stop their bodies from producing an egg.
What we really disagree on is whether the rights and freedoms appropriate to women and older teens are appropriately extended to kids 10 and 11 years old…
No, that’s not what we really disagree on. Nobody except you is talking about “rights and freedoms” for 11-year-olds. What I’m talking about is basic bodily self-defense for a girl who’s been assaulted.
…especially when the exercise of those rights would give them (and their developing bodies) over-the-counter access to powerful hormones, on who knows how regular a basis.
Horse. Shit. If you were concerned about kids mucking up their developing bodies with stuff from the drugstore, you would be rioting over the easy availability of Tylenol, Advil, Benadryl, and so on. But for most people the cost/benefit analysis of such drugs makes it clear that it’s better to keep them OTC.
Plan B has far less risk than any of those common, cheap, readily available OTCs, yet it confers a much greater benefit: it can stop a girl from being impregnated by a rapist! It’s immediate First Aid for a girl whose bodily integrity has been violated in the most heinous way. The rapist has already gotten his sperm into her; but now she can at least shut down her ovaries so they don’t pop out an egg at this worst of all possible times. The cost/benefit analysis—if that were really what this was about—would be a no-brainer.
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Toonces says:
Oh I get it. It’s just concern about dangerous hormones. Thank Frog there aren’t any hormone surges during pregnancy.
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Sameol says:
who most of you would blithely send off to the local pharmacy without medical advice, education, or supervision.
Erm, you’re the person who said that it’s better to allow the child to become pregnant so she can have an abortion, and you’re tossing around “blithe”? Really?
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quixote says:
The reason the FDA recommended OTC status is that Plan B is less dangerous and has fewer side effects than most OTC drugs. You don’t need medical advice for Advil. You don’t need medical advice for Plan B. Not if you’re 11, and not if you’re 33. It’s safe.
What part of “safe” is hard to understand?
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DianeT says:
Ideally, any woman or girl capable of reproduction should be able to obtain — if necessary, anonymously and at no cost from a public health department — a prescription for birth control medication along with screening for risk factors and education on how to use it.
I’m not so sure that “if an 11-year-old girl has sperm in her body, then it’s almost certainly because she’s been raped.” Even very young girls are having sex at much earlier ages these days, because they want to. At my daughter’s school, there were nine year olds already giving blow jobs.
I would have liked to see Plan B made available over the counter to girls 14 and up. But I do wonder if girls younger than 14 might lack the cognitive maturity (or whatever) not to use Plan B as primary birth control.
Maybe if Obama is reelected, this decision will be quietly rescinded, and the republic will march on. In the meantime, I’m sorting it out for myself. But one thing I do know is that my daughter who is now twelve will have a prescription for birth control as soon as she wants it. I know that not all girls her age have supportive parents with the resources to protect them.
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Violet Socks says:
I’m not so sure that “if an 11-year-old girl has sperm in her body, then it’s almost certainly because she’s been raped.” Even very young girls are having sex at much earlier ages these days, because they want to. At my daughter’s school, there were nine year olds already giving blow jobs.
You can’t get pregnant from a blow job. I guess I should have said “has sperm in her body in a place where it can make her pregnant,” because that’s what I meant. Sperm in her reproductive tract. And yes, the overwhelming majority of pregnant 11-year-olds are the victims of rape, statutory or otherwise.
But I do wonder if girls younger than 14 might lack the cognitive maturity (or whatever) not to use Plan B as primary birth control.
And this is how Obama is moving the conversation ever further to the right and creating ever more obstacles to the health of women and girls. When Sebelius announced that she was keeping the ban on Plan B because of “cognitive” immaturity, everyone laughed. But now, lo and behold, that’s become part of the dialogue, and people are repeating it as if it’s a real concern.
You know, I think it’s worth noting that every single relevant medical body in this country, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, is vehemently in favor of making Plan B OTC for everyone. Not just okay with it; vehemently in favor of it. And everyone, from the AAP to the FDA itself, has made it clear that there is absolutely no evidence that 11-year-olds can’t use Plan B correctly. (Which of course is putting aside the fact that no other medication is held to that standard. Only medications that give females control over their bodies. How strange.)
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quixote says:
This is a truly amazing thread. I’ve been trying to believe that all you folks worrying about the cognition of 11 year-olds mean well, but I’m starting to doubt. What is wrong with you people?
Are none of you female and old enough to remember the bad old days, before abortion rights? Do you have any inkling of the sheer, unadulterated terror that pregnancy caused? Do you remember how that had very little to do with having sex or not? You were fifteen goddamn years old, or some such. You believed in luck. Until it deserted you.
Then girls would start a desperate struggle to find the hundreds of dollars for a trip to New York, and the hundreds more for an abortion there. That’s like raising about $10,000 now. In three weeks. When you’re a teenager. The ones who didn’t manage sometimes ran away from home and wound up dead in a ditch. Others skipped all the fiddling around and just committed suicide.
Are you idiots seriously in favor of going back to that? Because that’s what stopping women from controlling their own lives does. And you’re saying that’s better, terrorized and dead girls are better, than girls who just might have sex when they feel like it. Do you see why I’m calling you “idiots”?
Plan B short circuits that whole process. You’re 14, you got too excited in the back of a car, and now that you’re feeling sober you quietly buy Plan B. End of story. No need for a family WWIII because you might need an abortion. No need for massive stressing that might make you flunk all your classes that year. No need for any of that. (Unless of course it fails. It only has an 88% success rate.)
And you people want to take that away from kids on the off chance that they aren’t “mature” about it? Say WHAT? Of course they’re not mature. They’re kids. That’s why they need Plan B.
What you’re really worrying about is that teenage girls might have sex. If you were really worried about harm to their fragile minds, you’d be handing out packets of Plan B in the school lavatories. Because every single other alternative is thousands of times more fraught, and some of them are millions of times more physically dangerous, than Plan B.
(And my apologies to Violet for taking over her comments with this interminable scream!)
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Nell says:
What Quixote said. Every. Damn. Word.
And, oh yeah, I’m old enough to remember.
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Ciardha says:
Quixote, I was just 7 in 1973, but believe me I know, I was a college student when the right to lifers started bombing Planned Parenthood clinics. I was also in my early 20′s in 1989 when 400,000 women marched on Washington DC for abortion rights- the majority of those women were college age women.
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Violet Socks says:
For the record, I want to note that my comment #42 was based on data that is a few years old. Since then, studies have shown pretty conclusively that Plan B does not interfere with implantation at all. This summary sheet from the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics gives the rundown on the current thinking (at least as of March 2011).
So there no longer seems to be any reason to even hold out the caveat that Plan B might somehow secretly be interfering with implantation. It clearly isn’t.
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Cleaver says:
From the Plan B product information for pharmacists:
Plan B® One-Step works primarily by
Preventing ovulation
Possibly preventing fertilization by altering tubal transport of sperm and/or egg
Altering the endometrium, which may inhibit implantationOh, and “pretty conclusively” now means “not at all.”
Got it.
Stay tuned for the vocationally furious Dr. Violet Socks.
Over and all the way out.
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Violet Socks says:
You really are a troll, aren’t you? Damn. I just quoted a survey of recent studies—did you read it? Did you even click on the link? Among other things, it addresses the need to update the product labeling for Plan B. Here’s what it says:
Language on implantation should not be included in LNG ECP product labeling.
And you’re the one slinging around accusations of intellectual dishonesty.
I’ve given you a pass this long just because you’ve commented here before, but no more. Bye.
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Susan says:
Just when I think that Obama can’t get any worse, he does.
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Val says:
(Weakly waving my hand from the sidelines) I’m glad you quoted that 88% success rate, Q, bcz I was one of those 12% who DIDN’T dodge a pregnancy w/Plan B.
Thank Dog I was a grown woman of 37 w/the means to take the next step…
Nothing done by this administration surprises me.
