Is AAP’s “routine Plan B Rx for teen girls” step too far for Obama?
During Thanksgiving week the American Academy of Pediatrics announced its recommendation that “morning after” prescriptions be issued to adolescent girls as a matter of course….
This approach, besides being deeply insulting to the human dignity of adolescents, exposes the reality that when we talk about sex these days, we all too often put good health and good sense aside, despite the rhetoric about “women’s health.” (Even the pediatricians do!) “Women’s health” routinely assumes promiscuity, whatever the age, and despite the risks to the girl’s or woman’s physical and mental health….
The AAP recommendation, as it happens, might be a step too far for even the Obama administration. Earlier this year, when the Department of Health and Human Services overruled a Federal Drug Administration recommendation that Plan B be made available over the counter, none other than Barack Obama declared: “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…. The reason Kathleen [Sebelius] made this decision was she could not be confident that a ten-year-old or an eleven-year-old going 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.”
Could we actually take a few steps back together here? Toward something healthier than a wholesale surrender of innocence, medical knowledge, and common sense?
~ Kathryn Jean Lopez (pictured), National Review Online, December 3
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Does NOBODY believe girls can say NO these days? Are we all so afraid of adolencent pregnancies that we can’t find any healthier solutions?
Where does it say they will be forced to fill any prescriptions, take the medication or have sex? Girls can and do say no. Perhaps it is those who claim they will always say no and then don’t who will benefit most from this.
Totally agreed about common sense.
Once again, its girls who take the risks under the latest lib brain fart. While teen boys sow their seeds, girls get pumped with fake hormones. Great plan.
I mentioned to a worker at my apt. complex that a 24-year-old man asked to “visit” me when I was only 15. “I told him ‘no,'” I said.
She said, “You had more sense than I did, Denise. A man that age asked me out when I was 15 and I talked my parents into letting me go on the date. I had my son when I was 15.”
It so happened that I was extremely attracted to this man. He was leaning over the brick wall separating the property he was on and mine when he talked with me. I was watching my little brother. At one point the man asked, “Do you have to follow him so close?”
He wondered why I kept following the toddler. I was thinking: That is what I will get if this man does what he wants. I will have a baby of my own.
I also thought about what abortions look like.
Thus, even though I found the man very attractive, I was able to say “no.”
Well, that’s why 15 year olds shouldn’t be making those kinds of decisions anyway, and I think it’s more important for PARENTS to have some sense.
If someone in his 20’s came sniffing around my daughter at 15, if he valued his reproductive organs very much, he’d leave. Immediately.
It’s also about big pharma making new customers as early as possible. Not all the kids on psychotropic drugs? We can fix that. Pills for this, pills for that, and lifelong customers. Kids with common sense, healthy lifestyles, and involved parents don’t make MONEY for big pharma and their lobbyists.
There is money to made off of the continued promiscuity of our young!
Cha Ching!
What would happen if Pat Robertson said that all adolescents should be issued a Bible?
A teen girl has just been raped. She is terrified that she might be pregnant. If she is pregnant, she plans to abort.
Should she take the “Morning After Pill”?
Should she get an emergency D&C?
I know some are concerned that a zygote might possibly fall off the uterine wall. But wouldn’t even that be preferable to a fetus being torn to pieces?
“What would happen if Pat Robertson said that all adolescents should be issued a Bible?” – no-one would be terribly surprised. Many would laugh. And his plan wouldn’t come to fruition.
“Many would laugh. And his plan wouldn’t come to fruition.”
Exactly. And the same should be done with the AAP here.
I became ME at conception. ’nuff said.
It may well be so John.
There would be nothing to stop Pat from providing trestle tables laden with bibles for adolescents to avail themselves of though. This could be the same.
I’ll repost a modified version of what I wrote earlier for the benefit of Reality.
From an article by a victim of sexual abuse as a pre-teen (reprinted from SisterLife (1990)):
“Just before I was 13 years old, I was sexually abused by an older brother and by a college-age friend of the family. … About 3 or 4 months after the abuse began, I was late for a period. … I turned to my Sunday school teacher for help. When I told her I thought I might be pregnant (at 12 years old) she didn’t even blink. She gave me a hug and said I should go to Planned Parenthood for a ‘rabbit test’, that I should get one of my older brothers to take me and not tell my parents. She never asked who the male partner was, or why I was sexually active at my age. So my older brother took me to Planned Parenthood. … No one asked who my ‘partner’ was, no one expressed any dismay, concern, or even interest that a 12-year-old girl needed a pregnancy test. I learned a lot about ‘being responsible’ and ‘taking control of my body’. Someone gave me a handful of condoms on the way out, and made a joke about it being an assortment – red, blue, and yellow. … Two days later I received a phone call telling me the test was positive, and to come in the following Saturday morning. … The caller never used the word ‘pregnant’ or ‘abortion’. I did not keep that appointment; my period started that evening. … It was not until 3 years later that I discovered, in a high school biology class, that you cannot get pregnant from oral sexual contact.”
She went on to write – “Over the years, I have found out that my story is very common in two aspects, neither of which will be good news for either side in the abortion debate. The first is the fact that my experience with Planned Parenthood was not an aberration. The sexual attitude often championed by Planned Parenthood is a serious factor in preventing the discovery of sexual abuse of young people. … Furthermore, birth control counseling and abortion often indirectly contribute to the victim’s sense of shame, guilt, and blame for what is happening, since she is told to ‘take control’ and ‘be responsible’ for her ‘sexual activity.’, implying that this situation is, indeed, within her power to control.”
Planned Parenthood’s philosophy fills me with loathing.
That Sunday school teacher should have gone to the cops or children’s services, it’s pretty unforgivable to know that a young kid might be pregnant and not try to help the situation and find out if there is abuse going on. Even if anything had been “consensual”, it was still rape because twelve year olds can’t consent to sex in any state.
And of course Planned Parenthood, being health care professionals (and mandatory reporters), should be held responsible for failing to report a sexually active twelve year old, which (I can’t stress enough) is never consensual sex legally. It’s pretty disgusting that they wouldn’t do anything. I consider them responsible for any sexual abuse that occurred after they saw that girl as a patient.
“I’ll repost a modified version of what I wrote earlier for the benefit of Reality” – why is it specifically for my benefit? I made no comment about it.
“Planned Parenthood’s philosophy fills me with loathing” – why have you reserved all your loathing for PP? What about the church? What about the girls parents?
“why have you reserved all your loathing for PP? What about the church? What about the girls parents?”
Well, I don’t know if I loathe the girls parents, I don’t know if they knew what was going on. I heap a pile of blame on the Sunday school teacher, I don’t know if she is a legal mandatory reporter (I don’t know the law about religious authorities and reporting), but any rational adult should have known that “don’t tell your parents, we will take care of this” is a horrendous response to a twelve year old telling you that she might be pregnant. Especially for an adult in a position of authority, like a teacher. Maybe this teacher is just really naive or unaware of the reality of sexual abuse, it doesn’t excuse her but it’s a little more understandable.
But Planned Parenthood has zero excuses at all. They are healthcare professionals and are mandatory reporters by law (at least in my state, not incredibly sure how universal those laws are). From what I understand, mandatory reporters are given training on what constitutes abuse and their responsibilities if they suspect it. They utterly failed at those responsibilities. A lot of people failed this girl, and they deserve all the scorn that can be heaped on them. Possible legal consequences too. Sexual abuse is impossible to fight if people who are legal mandatory reporters are sweeping it under the rug.
AAP is trying to force Plan B on ALL Teen Girls. These girls will STORM out of the Doctors office after screaming NO!!!!!!
“AAP is trying to force Plan B on ALL Teen Girls” – what nonsense!