George Bush Forced Her To Have An Abortion

[kpete]

George Bush Forced Her To Have An Abortion
Posted by Ron Chusid
June 4th, 2006 @ 11:16 am

Well, not really force, but in this column in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/02/AR2006060201405.html a women explains how she wound up seeking an abortion due to being unable to obtain Plan B, an emergency contraceptive pill which can prevent pregnancy if taken within seventy-two hours of conception. The author explains her inability to obtain a prescription–all of which sounds quite plausible to someone in the medical profession. She then explains why a prescription was necessary:

My anger propelled me to get to the bottom of the story. It turns out that in December 2003, an FDA advisory committee, whose suggestions the agency usually follows, recommended that the drug be made available over the counter, or without a prescription. Nonetheless, in May 2004, the FDA top brass overruled the advisory panel and gave the thumbs-down to over-the-counter sales of Plan B, requesting more data on how girls younger than 16 could use it safely without a doctor’s supervision.

Apparently, one of the concerns is that ready availability of Plan B could lead teenage girls to have premarital sex. Yet this concern — valid or not — wound up penalizing an over-the-hill married woman for having sex with her husband. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.

By late August 2005, the slow action over Plan B led the director of the FDA’s Office on Women’s Health to resign her post. The agency’s delay on the drug, she wrote in an e-mail to her colleagues, “runs contrary to my core commitment to improving and advancing women’s health.” As recently as April 7, Steven Galson, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said that the agency still needed time to work on the issue.

After describing her ordeal in greater detail she observed, “All the while, I was thinking that if religion hadn’t been allowed to seep into American politics the way it has, I wouldn’t even be there. This all could have been stopped way before this baby was conceived if they had just let me have that damn pill.”

Republicans may claim to be supporters of small government, but here is yet another example showing that they are actually the party which supports increased government intrusion in individual’s lives. You cannot claim to be the party of limited government or greater freedom when you are the ones limiting individual’s choices.

http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=3188