Sharon Camp (Guttmacher): Sebelius contraception ruling a step back

[alp227]

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' directive overruling the Food and Drug Administration's decision to make emergency contraception available over the counter for all women, including girls under 17, was not only unprecedented, it was substantively without merit.

After a thorough and months-long review of the evidence, the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research determined that the contraceptive, Plan B One-Step, was safe and effective for teens, and that teens on their own understood what the product did -- and didn't do -- and how to use it. Based on these expert findings, the FDA commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, concluded that Plan B One-Step was "safe and effective and should be approved for nonprescription use for all females of childbearing potential."

(...)

Sebelius, who is not a scientist and who offered no evidence to contradict the FDA's conclusions, said she based her decision on her personal belief that adolescents as young as 11 might not understand how to use emergency contraception without guidance from a health care professional. To invoke 11-year-olds was not only inflammatory, but diversionary.

Fewer than 1% of 11-year-old girls have had sexual intercourse, but close to half of girls -- most beginning at 15 or 16 -- have had sex by their 17th birthday. Under Sebelius' ruling, girls under 17 will be unable to obtain emergency contraception without a doctor's prescription. And if, as Sebelius insists, younger teens are unable to understand the label on this product--which the evidence suggests they can-- it follows that they also wouldn't understand the labels on countless other over-the-counter medications that can have severe, even fatal, side-effects if misused -- which this product does not.

full: http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/09/opinion/camp-sebelius-pill/index.html

[Vincardog]

1. Why not take Tylenol off the OCT market. It can cause a lot more harm even death.

Or doesn't the religious right wing really care about anything other than controlling women's uteruses?

[tblue]

2. Punishing women for having sex

That's all it ever is about.

I just wish our POTUS would stare them down. I think he just decided this was better politically for the time being. I don't agree, but everything now is about re-election.

[Vincardog]

3. If he thinks the mushy middle or the radical right is ever going to vote for him, he is as crazy as.

he thinks I am.

[tblue]

6. He's aiming for the 'Center'

because he believes you and I will have no other choice but him. He does not care what we think.

[Vincardog]

8. Then he and his ardent admirers wont mind if I decline to vote for ANY Republican

[xchrom]

4. recommend

[femrap]

5. K and R nt

[postulater]

7. Occupy Uteri!

"the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research determined that the contraceptive, Plan B One-Step, was safe and effective for teens, and that teens on their own understood what the product did -- and didn't do -- and how to use it."

This is shameful.

Shame Obama for allowing or directing Sibelius to do that.

If science trumps ignorance and politics trumps science, does ignorance trump politics?

[Marnie]

9. Why would girls under the age of conscent be denied

the morning after pill as a part of their post "statutory rape" medical and emotional treatment and support?

Especially when incest is so often a part young women's introduction to intercourse.

Their relative uses and abused them as though they were urinals, and their government used them as baby factories. Uncle Sam too often is exactly like Uncle Sandusky, and is being protected by the guys.