Abortion Pill, Sebelius and Young Women

It absolutely amazes me by the lack of concern we have toward our younger generation and more notably our young girls.  For example, in California it is impossible for a child under 18 to get into a tanning bed or be treated for a broken arm without her parents approval but she can be given Gardasil without it. She cannot buy cigarettes or liquor but, had the FDA had its way, she could have purchased the "morning after" pill or had an abortion.  Does this make any sense to you? In my way of thinking, tanning beds, cigarettes and liquor pose significantly lower chance of permanent damage than an abortion, the unproven Morning after pill or Gardasil.
Sure there are benefits from not getting cervical cancer, however, we do not have any testing of Gardasil to know what the long range damage of it might be. Could it cause sterility or some child deformation that we do not even know about now? Obviously we don't but by cavalierly pushing the drug onto young girls without extensive testing should be criminal.  
The same thing goes for the "Morning after" pill also known as Plan B.  It has not been tested enough to really know how it will effect our younger generations.
I remember when Yaz was first introduced. The ads showed young women and extolled the benefits of having only 4 periods a year. That just did not make sense to me. Well, now it has been pulled because there have been very detrimental health problems such as (from the Yaz website): 
                 "YAZ increases the risk of serious conditions including blood clots, stroke, and heart attack."


Would you want your daughter to take this? I sure would not.


The groups behind the Morning After Pill, abortions, the abortion exception for young women and Gardasil are politically liberal  women's lib groups who feel they must promote "liberation" at all costs, regardless of the damage that might occur.  Any limitation on female promiscuity or the liberal agenda would hurt their movement. 


These same women and men are deathly silent when it comes to Arab culture where women are second or sometimes third class citizens. In Saudi Arabia as well as much of the Islamic world, they cannot drive cars and those that do so, are punished by flogging.  They cannot go out by themselves without a male relative as their escort. They must wear a burka.  If they do anything that "dishonors" the family, they could subject themselves to an "honor killing."


So why the silence? It is either willful ignorance or intentional dishonesty or political opportunism.  Regardless of the reason, it  shows me that they are a one dimensional, one subject group intent only on accomplishing their very narrow goals. In other words, "we want our way and whatever else is happening, we don't care about, as long as we get our way!"


They REALLY cannot care about women as they would speak out loudly about the mistreatment of Arab women. They would insist that medicines and treatment be safe for all women to take with very limited dangers to them. When drugs were shown to be damaging, insist on their immediate removal. They would speak out loudly when any woman was treated badly, not just those who support their goals. No, these groups are just political hacks masquerading as caring, women-promoting individuals.


So when Secretary Sebelius insisted that girls under 18 would need a parent's approval to purchase the drug, these groups when ballistic. How could they do this? It is a "woman's right." 


 The real answer is that once the election is over and should Obama regain the Presidency, the new Secretary will approve the right for 13 year-olds to get the pill. Why, because the Women's Movement will demand it. By the way, it also will be approved by most of the Republican candidates, should they become President. Why? Because the Women's Movement will demand it!


Here is more on the Plan "b" controversy written by a Pro-life Democrat. (Can you believe there are any of those out there?).  Tell us what you like or hate about this issue.


Conservative Tom




   

Plan B and politics vs. common sense

By Kathy Dahlkemper, former Congresswoman - 12/15/11 02:48 PM ET

The recent decision by Secretary Sebelius to override the FDA recommendation that young children under 17 should be allowed to purchase Plan B over the counter has received much criticism from women’s groups.  Clamoring that politics influenced the decision-making process, abortion rights supporters are actually correct.  However, they were pointing the finger at the wrong person.  It was not Secretary Sebelius who was playing politics. Rather, it was the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) who approved initially Plan B for underage girls in the first place.

Plenty of drugs are safe, but not sold over the counter.  Lipitor, for example, is safe, but not sold over the counter because follow-up care is recommended due to potential kidney problems.  Likewise, the birth control pill, also deemed a safe drug, is not sold over the counter because it is an extremely powerful hormone that could have negative health effects.  

Plan B should be no different.  It is a double dose of the extremely powerful hormone found in the birth control pill and should receive more, not less, oversight than the pill.  In fact, because of the potential side effects, it is recommended that a woman seek follow-up care 2 to 3 weeks after taking the drug.  It is unclear how many women are actually seeking the recommended follow up care.

Plan B is intended to be used to prevent pregnancy, if a woman either forgets to use contraception or the contraception fails.  It is not intended to be used routinely.  In fact, manufacturers of the drug claim that it is less effective, if a woman uses it multiple times per month.  The long-term effects of taking the drug multiple times are unknown at this point.  It is not clear how many women are now using Plan B as a form of routine birth control rather than as an emergency contraception.

Unmonitored use of Plan B is risky, because of documented interactions with certain drugs used to treat diabetes, allergies, and seizures—not to mention certain antibiotics.  Furthermore, medical studies indicate that the rate of ectopic pregnancies may increase from 2% of all pregnancies to 10% of pregnancies begun while taking Plan B.

For Secretary Sebelius, an unapologetic abortion rights supporter, approving the FDA recommendation would have been the path of least resistance, especially since most observers expected it to go through anyway.

But the Secretary made a correct but hard decision.  Many women’s groups are upset—and their disappointment is understandable: making Plan B available over the counter would have made it much easier for women to avert an unplanned pregnancy in near-total privacy--without even talking to a doctor.  But this privacy would have been accompanied by potentially grave risks, and Secretary Sebelius put health and safety over politics.  The beneficiaries of her political courage are the young women and girls who could have potentially misused the drug and suffered serious long-term effects.

Women’s groups exist to look out for the best interests of women.  We pro-life Democrats differ strongly on whether abortion rights should be part of this, but firmly agree with their general goals of eliminating gender discrimination and empowering women educationally, professionally, and interpersonally.  Our pro-life convictions apply not simply from conception to the cradle, but from the cradle to the grave.  In this case, our desire to put women on an equal footing with men and to defend their privacy rights was trumped by the imperative of defending the lives of young women and girls (and any unborn children conceived before the pill was taken).  

Those of us in national politics suffer from a tendency to become so fixated on hard-fought lines in the sand that we lose sight of our overall priorities. We end up fighting so hard against compromising our short-term goals that we end up making compromises on our long-term goals.  We fail to clearly see what is really at stake.  And the rough and tumble of partisan politics all too often trumps good decision making.  Fortunately, in this case, Secretary Sebelius and President Obama elevated common sense over narrow partisanship. 

Dahlkemper is a former Democrat Congresswoman from Pennsylvania