The problem with making the morning-after pill as easy to get as a candy bar
Fox News reported today that a Texas high school coach faces felony charges after giving the morning-after pill to one of her underage 16-yr-old students.
There’s the first reason not to make the morning-after pill easily available to adults: Just because an adult buys it doesn’t mean an adult will take it.
Shippensburg University in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, says it is comfortable selling the morning-after pill Plan B from a vending machine because all students are over age 17.
But who is to say it will be a student buying the drug, not a teacher? Or a student dating a minor?
On Yahoo! Answers a guy asked:
So she doesn’t want to take any birth control or morning after…what if I crushed it up and slip it in food/drink? I know its morally wrong…but is it legally wrong? I’m not ready for a kid…I used condoms + pulled out but what if?
There’s a second reason not to make the morning-after pill easily available to adults. Just because the pills are intended for women doesn’t mean a man can’t buy them. They can… and do.
ao6 wrote on SteadyHealth.com:
I’m on the pill. I missed one, so I took the morning-after pill….
There’s a third reason not to make the morning-after as available as candy bars. The morning-after pill is composed of mega-doses of artificial female steroids – up to 12 times the dosage of birth control pills. Yet birth control pills are only available by prescription. Here are the equivalents to Plan B, on a website recommended by Planned Parenthood. Click to enlarge…
According to Plan B’s packaging, it “is not indicated for routine use as a contraceptive.” Yet what does a vending machine encourage, if not that?
Furthermore, “[T]here are no data on overdosage of Plan B.” In fact, not many studies have been completed whatsoever on the impact of Plan B on a woman’s body.
There are additional problems too numerous to list, first with Plan B itself, but exacerbated by easy access. Dr. Shaun Jester, an OB/GYN at nearby Nason Hospital, encapsulated quite a few in an AltoonaMirror.com article…
“Plan B claims to not prevent an ongoing pregnancy. This is deceptive because it does prevent implantation, and if a layperson believes life begins at conception then without implantation, the pregnancy will end,” he said. “That’s why definitions are so important. It’s like calling something blue when it’s really red.”
Possible consequences of taking the pill are eliminating the fear of getting pregnant, and therefore someone becomes more casual about sex, opening themselves up to contracting sexually-transmitted diseases, including non-curable ones such as HIV, Hepatitis C and herpes, Jester said.
Jester doesn’t understand why, but getting pregnant is the “big fear,” not contracting a disease, he said.
It could also prevent putting a stop to sexual abuse that may only have come to light with an unwanted pregnancy, he said.

Another scenario that was left out: What if say, a 10,11,or 12 year old hears her older sister say that she has easy access to Plan B on her college campus…
what if the 10,11 or 12 year-old asks her older sister to get it for her?
i have never taken plan B but a friend of mine did. she told me it made her very ill and told me never to take it. shes a 30 year old woman and she was nauseated cramping and throwing up. she said it scared her to death. now imagine a little girl taking it. i guess there is no script necessary if you are 17 and older??? not clear on that but its never a good idea.
This is a sex abuser/rapist’s dream come true…
I was thinking that if I were a student at that school, I’d buy out the entire vending machine stock as soon as they refilled it, make the pills unusable, and then dispose of them.
But that would cost a ton of money, since they have a lot of doses in that machine and it’s $25 a pop.
So I guess we should ban all over the counter medications that *might* fall into the hands of a rapist, abuser, murderer, neglectful parent, or child, up to and including Nyquil, Benadryl, Primatene, BenGay, Tylenol, vitamins and minerals, herbs, and anything with DXM. While we’re at it, let’s make swimming pools, honey, plastic buckets, forks, escalators, extension cords, Wii systems, World of Warcraft, tools, vehicles, motor oil, garden plants, and anything that normally belongs in a garage, bathroom, or kitchen prescription only? I mean, bad things can happen!!! Someone could misuse that hammer to murder someone!! Someone could strangle a baybeee with those Wii nunchucks!
Maybe you guys want someone to make the world a giant bouncy castle for you and life should be some version of wiffle ball, but a perfectly safe medication should not have this kind of opposition to it on YOUR religious convictions or on the conjecture that some idiot somewhere might misuse it. That someone might misuse it is not a valid argument against something since there are literally millions of perfectly legal and perfectly benign items that have been “misused” for nefarious purposes at some point. And whether YOU object to something on religious grounds is perfectly irrelevant.
And please don’t think your “it’s for the children” arguments are at all convincing.
My 18 year old daughter took this pill without my knowledge. Of course, she obtained it from PP. She is away at college and called me crying because she had heavy bleeding and terrible cramping from this pill. She was also vomitting. I had to go to where she was and take her to the doctor. The doctor said that this can happen and, thankfully, she is going to be ok. But, it scared her to death and she says she will never take it again…Thank God!
Next time teach your daughter to read. The possible side effects are listed on the medication. Duh.
apostate gee you sound pi&&ed. whats your problem? we are talking about a drug with serious side effects….DUH! did you not read my post about my 30 year old friend?
This has nothing to do with anyone’s “religious convictions”. It’s a DANGEROUS DRUG that should not be so easily available.
Your hatred of religion has nothing to do with it.
Not everyone who comes here is a Christian, or even religious in any way, but even the atheists and agnostics who post here have the decency not to insult those of us who ARE.
Why does anyone constantly come to a blog that they KNOW is full of “religious” people, just to spout off about their hatred of God/religion/church even if it has NO RELEVANCE to the topic being discussed?
That’s like saying to yourself “I hate God and Church, so I think I’ll go there just to tell people how much I hate them(God and Church)”.
JUST DON’T GO. That applies to pro-life and religious BLOGS, too. It just makes you (all) seem childish, immature and, in a few cases….DISTURBED.
Lynn, I’m glad your daughter is okay now. That must have been terrifying for her.
“we are talking about a drug with serious side effects….DUH! did you not read my post about my 30 year old friend?”
What does one anecdote tell us? Literally nothing, when compared to the thousands–if not millions–of women who take Plan B every day in both developed and developing countries and are absolutely fine. By the way, heather, a good friend of mine tried to OD on Tylenol in high school. He was 15. Are you ready to ban the OTC sale of acetaminophen yet?
Not to mention how dangerous this would be to a woman who is later in her pregnancy? I know that a lot of girls (even among my friends) tend to hope for the best and rationalize why their period is late. “maybe it’s stress” “maybe it’s something else” So, this is not really safe for anyone at all to obtain without a doctor’s prescription.
It boggles my mind how abortion devotees can be so cavalier about women’s health. Yes, we realize that abortion trumps anything else in the known universe. But really, I don’t want to see one of my friends, or my friends’ daughters, or my nieces, or cousins going to the emergency room or worse. I do care about women, and I don’t care if abortion devotees can wrap their brain around it or not. Maybe they think we can’t possibly care about women because they themselves don’t care. Maybe they think we can’t care about babies, toddlers, and teens, because they themselves don’t care. But I do. This drug is dangerous and mocking our concern won’t make it less dangerous.
Pamela, individuals like apostate do have a hatred for religion and love to vent their anger and hatred at individuals like us who are religious, and ususally aimed at the Catholic Church. Anger and hatred motivate them, so much that they applaud the killing of pre-born humans. People like this on the left seem to view all the evils of the world being caused by outside forces. People like myself, and I assume those that are religious, view evil as being caused by human nature and individual values. We just have totally different world views.
Oh, apostate! Silly! My kids play with the Wii all the time!!! Taking a drug that makes one’s uterus reject its contents and then expel them in (read here:BABY) a rush of blood and endless cramping, now that’s a different matter. Comparing the two is stupid.
Oh, wait. Human life doesn’t mean anything to you, and in your anger and bitterness, all you can do is wish doom on the families (especially the Christian ones) who post here. But that’s okay. You don’t have to stay barren and bitter and alone, though. Come on over! There’s hope here! And some of us even finished high school and have most of our teeth!
Oh okay Megan. “Hi. my name is Megan. I killed my unborn baby and I am HAPPY about it!” Who cares about YOUR stupid anecdote. Right?
Pamela is offering a story about her friend’s experience to the conversation. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any relevance. If you don’t like anecdotes then don’t come here. Sheesh.
Apostate, you sound like you have mental problems. Anyone who types “baybee” already shows how much hatred and disdain they have for children.
Most of us here have kids, and quite a few have daughters, so yes, we’re concerned about plan B. Megan, and probably you also, on the other hand, have killed yours so of course what do you care about kids getting hurt by powerful synthetic hormones?
“So, this is not really safe for anyone at all to obtain without a doctor’s prescription.”
Thus sayeth doctor ninek! Unfortunately, you’ll have to contend with the forces of the WHO, which says that levonorgestrel a) is not effective after implantation, and poses no known harm to the embryo/fetus if taken during gestation; and b) is not known to cause major health risks, even if taken repeatedly. But I’m sure the WHO is just a puppet institution secretly controlled by Cecile Richards, so what do I know?
Also please, spare us from the concern trolling. You only care that every embryo gets implanted and born, no matter what. It’s truly a bizarre and megalomaniacal way for regret to manifest itself.
Heather/Pamela: Yeah it’s a drug SO dangerous and the side effects SO serious that, unlike other OTC medications, no one has ever died or even been seriously injured from it.
I mean maybe the sky is falling only over your house? Or, if you were really concerned about drug safety, we could start a conversation about the horrific dangers of Sudafed and how it should be banninated considering all of the deaths and meth labs that have come from it and oh noez what if someone gives Sudafed to a child?
Maybe you guys don’t know how to read dosing instructions and ingredient lists and side effects listed on medication package inserts, and maybe you guys don’t even know what the medications you take are even FOR to begin with, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that most other people do.
So your concern is not only misplaced but rather condescending as well.
to add on to what Pamela said… if you pro choicers are really for choice then why do you care if a person believes in GOD? its my choice. what choices do you permit? are you the choice police? why do you so called “bastions of tolerance” care if we are pro life? isnt that our choice?
There are already plenty of stories of boyfrieds trying to secretly give their girlfriend drugs to make the woman abort their recently conceived baby. Now, these will happen more than ever.
Adults sometimes buy alcohol for the under-aged. Sometimes the under-aged use false ID to purchase alcohol.
We all know the negative impact alcohol can have on people. Especially while they are still developing.
And alcohol consumption by one person can have a deleterious impact on others. Road accidents, fights or assaults, lowered levels of risk perception.
Some might even become less inhibited and have sex or something.
So perhaps we ought to ban alcohol……oh.
oh but law my friend did read about the side effects but she didnt anticipate what happened after she ingested it. she was afraid she would die the side effects were so bad. i think you would agree that no 11 year old should be taking such a drug. if a 30 year old was that afraid then imagine how a kid would feel.
So perhaps we ought to ban alcohol……oh.
I wouldn’t want to be around for the Catholic outcry over that one. Can you imagine the clerical outrage?? LOL.
Heather: So your friend read about the side effects then didn’t think the side effects would happen to her? Do I have that right? Are all of your friends that stupid or just that one?
BTW it is certainly your choice to believe whatever you want. It is MY choice to ridicule you when I find it opportune to do so for my own personal entertainment.
law, people have died from the pill. And Plan B is more potent and a higher dosage of powerful synthetic hormones than the pill. So what you mean is no one has died YET. Plan B is relatively new on the market. Are you really naive enough to think the pill can kill yet Plan B won’t?
People have died from Ben Gay. We don’t ban legitimate medicine because of a few tragedies.
what do you mean law? why are you so stupid?
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/briefs/storm-lake-iowa-man-pleads-not-guilty-to-ending-woman/article_61fba1c9-60c1-51b9-b067-dfeafb04aaaf.html
Man gives Ben Gay to woman to end her pregnancy. JUST KIDDING! Using Ben Gay to end a pregnancy makes no sense. You would want to use and abortifacient.
just like many women die from legal abortion. oh well. who cares? they knew the surgery came with risks…isnt that right law?
The trolls need to get a grip. Birth control pills are only available by prescription b/c high doses of hormones have serious side effects. But super high doses of hormones are sold otc and out of vending machines w/out so much as the slightest bit of medical advice or oversight for these girls. It’s true that even w/ prescriptions you can have abuses, but making something available otc does create the impression that it’s something relatively benign and safe. Even among people who support the use of these drugs, there are reasonable people who step back and say this is a serious medication that should be taken under medical supervision. That’s a pretty moderate position.
Exactly, CT. I used to be incredibly pro-choice, and even then I thought that Plan B should be prescription-only. Why? I took it once while also on BCP, and became very sick. After that, I wondered why something with such severe side effects could be sold over-the-counter like aspirin.
“just like many women die from legal abortion. oh well. who cares? they knew the surgery came with risks…isnt that right law?” – no, not ‘many’. At a lower mortality rate than in childbirth too.
I encourage people here to check out All Our Lives. We are a pro life group dedicated both to ending abortion and to promoting scientifically accurate info about contraception. Current information indicates that emergency contraception works entirely before conception and does not prevent implantation.
“You only care that every embryo gets implanted and born,”
OMG, I think the pro-life message has finally penetrated! Congratulations!
How about 50 prolife organizations and abortifacent victims sue
• Planned Parenthood
• and the owners of abortuary vending machines selling highly toxic, lethal and dangerous.
• and women who find the propasal of fetacidal vending machines in their places of work and education so compleately offinsive it causes emotional distress that will require years of expensive therapy and counseling to recover from.
This is like a porn magazine stand at the front counter of a conveniece store with all the covers showing–except it is in the school and workplace. You can’t tell me the placement of such machines won’t encourage sexual discrimination.
apostate, your IDEAS are idiotic. But don’t worry, we’re all praying for you.
How about 50 prolife organizations and abortifacent victims sue
• Planned Parenthood, &
• Owners of abortuary vending machines selling highly toxic, lethal and dangerous drugs unmonitored by adults or Dr’s, &
• Women who find the propasal of fetacidal vending machines in their places of work and education so offensive it causes emotional distress that will require years of expensive therapy and counseling to recover from.
The very presence of such a vending machine is vulgar and offensive and is in-your-face sexual harassment, and I want to sue!
It is like a porn magazine stand at the front counter of a convenience store with all the covers showing–except it is in your school and workplace-? You can’t tell me the placement of such machines won’t encourage sexual predators and heartily insult women of child-bearing age content of their child bearing capabilities, because to them(us) it is a vending machine that distributes a pill that will kill your dreams. Abortion is just mean a mean thing to suggest. None-the-less, guys like Tosh.0 and feminazi’s would offer it to us like it’s a darned twinkie.
apostate, don’t worry, we’re praying for you.
I tried to make it nicer, but i just posted twice-yikes, I am praying for you ‘apostate,’ I apologize for insulting your ideas-though, I would appreciate if you would recognize you are writing off the greatest treasure I feel like I could offer, which is my future children-planned or unplanned. Your future children might not be in your field of vision yet, but I pray that you will recognize the options available to you if you find yourself in a situation where a pre-born life is dependent upon your compassion, especially if it is your own child whose life is depending on you.
“The very presence of such a vending machine is vulgar and offensive and is in-your-face sexual harassment, and I want to sue!”
If you read the article on Fox News.com you will see that:
“The machine, which vends only health-related items, is in a private room in our health center and the health center is accessible only by students 17 and older and not the public,”
So it’s not “in your face.”
“You can’t tell me the placement of such machines won’t encourage sexual predators”
This pill is also available at the local CVS.
It’s been tested and shown to be a safe drug. Unlike RU 486, it doesn’t induce an abortion. Outside the Catholic Church, it is not considered an abortion drug as it prevents implantation. Not everybody agrees that life begins at the moment of conception. The students are overwhelmingly supportive so shouldn’t the “nannies” in the anti-choice movement just mind their own business? Oh right, they won’t be satisfied until every birth control pill and device is banned – for the good of the women. Am I right?
“None-the-less, guys like Tosh.0 and feminazi’s would offer it to us like it’s a darned twinkie”
And good Christian kids are free to refuse it. Right?
And BTW, if you’re going to sue Planned Parenthood and all the other places where these machines supposedly are, how bout suing all the drug stores that carry it, too.
megan you said your friend tried to od on tylenol so should we ban it? whaaaaa? thats totally different. women who take plan b arent trying to kill themselves. its a dangerous drug and people seem to want to downplay the danger. im not at all for banning otc tylenol because if taken as directed it isnt dangerous. im sorry that kid tried to take his life with tylenol but he was attempting suicide. if he hadnt gotten tylenol he would have found another way. i really hope the poor guy got the help he needed!
people jump off bridges to kill themselves. do we tear down every bridge? some people pull their cars into garages and carbon monoxide themselves to death. do we stop making cars? garages? NO we treat the problem of depression if we are able to reach that person first. suicide is tragic but every day people are still going to do it and we cant stop everyone.;(
When I was 17 I was in a relationship with a 24 year old man and he purchased this drug for me several times at a pharmacy. It bothers me that once a woman is of a certain age (16 in my state) it’s like the law assumes that she is not vulnerable to male manipulation. Many of the students who will have easy access to this drug (which did cause severe cramping, bleeding, and vomiting when I took it) are either men who are purchasing it for a younger partner or women who are themselves being coerced by older men. It’s easy as a young woman just gaining independence to fall prey to the desires of an older partner. Many feel they owe the guy something just for being interested. Now as the mother of a daughter I hope that if she were ever in a similar situation there would at least be a purchase record of the drug so the man can’t simply flee in his cowardice, especially if the pill fails and she finds herself pregnant, as I did the third time I took it.
I agree with what Jamie said. This is a rapist/.abuser’s dream. What’s to stop an abuser from buyting the drug from the vending machine and forcing a 13 year old to take it?
wow HH thanks for that interesting post. im glad you got out of that relationship.
“What’s to stop an abuser from buying the drug from the vending machine and forcing a 13 year old to take it”
And what’s to stop an abuser from buying the drug from the CVS and doing the same thing? What’s to stop an abuser from abusing with or without the availability of a morning after pill?
The first drive was to have pharmacists dispensing Plan B without a prescription, for people 17 and older. Now it’s placed over the counter. The intent from the beginning was to make it available for use in underage girls without a prescription.
Plan B was put over the counter in order to have people accustomed to having freely available morning after pills, usable on girls or women. The FDA approved Ella (an analog of RU486) as a morning after pill in order to make home abortions possible, by accumulating doses. Ella is a prescription drug now, but will soon be placed over the counter. This is to allow abortions to be initiated at home, and then finished up at any hospital, if needed.
You can obtain a little background on the low quality of professionals who think that over the counter morning after pills are a good idea. One such expert was used by ABC news for information on the consequences to a pregnant woman of accidentally taking methotrexate (also usable as an abortion drug.) Instead of recommending an antidote, he recommended abortion. This same person had earlier weighed in on the issue of bringing Plan B over the counter. You’ll see from his comments that it has always been about making very young females more accessible for sex. The Abortion marketeers participating in this discussion can stop pretending that girls won’t be given this drug without their consent. It’s just another date rape drug.
Read here to learn about Ella, the new morning after pill, and other abortion drugs.
CC: By your logic, we should remove all restrictions on the purchase of guns, alcohol, and strong painkillers. Since there is always a way around the restrictions for the person who is determined to do it. Why bother with all these regulations!
A bit off topic, but I recently had a discussion on Facebook with a “friend” who insists that since “15 million people die every year from starvation worldwide” that the 43.8 million abortions worldwide are justifiable. After all, they would all just die of starvation right? AAAAAAACKKK!!!
Of course he had no documentation to back up any of his assertions and wouldn’t even respond to any of my well-documented arguments. Just kept insisting “it’s simple math”.
Makes me so sad to know there are people out there who think like him.
(Thanks friends, I just needed a safe place to vent!) :)
Actually, cc validates what we’re saying: it should be (while still legal) only dispensed by a physician like any other dangerous drug. A predator could buy it elsewhere, which is why it should only be prescribed by a doctor to the woman who is taking it. Until, of course, it becomes illegal altogether. :>)
“So perhaps we ought to ban alcohol…oh”
“I wouldn’t want to be around for the Catholic outcry over that one. Can you imagine the clerical outrage?? LOL”
You have read the bible, haven’t you? Jesus drank wine. Oh, the horror.
The medication kills living pre-born babies.
That doesn’t help.
Adoption, especially an open adoption, is the creative solution that helps mother, baby, and adoptive families.
What do you want, morning sickness, or the sickness of morning?
It causes me great emotional distress that this choice is being thrown in my line of sight.
They should keep their slandering of women out of the public eye.
I have taken the day after pill twice in a period of 4 yearsand had no side effects AT ALL, I’m 29 years old and perfectly healthy. Cigarettes, alcohol, legal and illegal drugs, obesity among other things are also harmful to women, pregnant women and unborn children. But since these are all old news no one cares anymore! That doesnt mean they stopped being bad! Everyone deserves to have a choice on what they decide to do with their lives, I have seen many women with so many children they don’t know what to do withemselves.
If you believe a woman should stay pregnant that’s fine! Why do you people have to always involve God in everything you stand for? The funny things is, people who talk about religion and God are always the one who try to put other people down just because they don’t have the same belieefs. How sad that God always have to be put in the middle of everything.
Why do you people have to always involve God in everything you stand for?
Truth1 is “because we submit ourselves to God’s will in everything.”
The funny things is, people who talk about religion and God are always the one who try to put other people down just because they don’t have the same belieefs.
Truth2 is that “you should be providing the post where you were put down.”
How sad that God always have to be put in the middle of everything.
Truth3 should be “you explaining why we should not put God into everything we do.”