Picture, if you will, that if you repeat a falsehood often enough, people will actually believe it.
Andrea perpetuates the “politics prevented Plan B” myth repeated in loaded news stories. Since when did news reporters stop fact-checking? Silly question, I know.
The 2003 Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee, stacked with leftover Clinton appointees, was the one putting politics over science.
The FDA must be sure a drug is both effective and safe for its proposed usage, and Plan B has never been proved safe for over-the-counter use – especially for minors.
Plan B is the same drug as the regular birth control pill – which requires a prescription – but it’s 25 times stronger.
Since medical reasons, such as avoiding blood clots, require taking the lower-dose pill only under a doctor’s care, Bush officials were right to overturn the advisory committee’s blithe, unprecedented assurance that the turbo version would be fine without one, thank you.
It was the only such case in 10 years because it was the most absurd, unscientific decision in 10 years.
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, testified at that Advisory Committee meeting and explains that “there are activists and advocates for the drug on the committee,” not just the impartial scientists, as Andrea believes.
Today, conservative warnings about Plan B have come to pass, and OTC nations like the United Kingdom. have seen the inevitable consequences: Women taking it 40 times in a row, schools giving it to 11-year-olds like candy, and health officials warning of serious health complications such as infertility.
U.S. District Judge Edward Korman ignored all that, relying on incorrect information instead. (Maybe he’s been reading the news, too.)
“His decision said Plan B would be 89 percent effective and decrease abortions – the same thing advocates originally said to get it OTC,” Wright said.
“Yet even prominent advocates of Plan B and medical journals now say it does not reduce pregnancies and abortions.”
Parents should be furious with a judge undermining their oversight and their girls’ safety based on a myth.
“Teenagers,” Wright said, “still need a parental signature for tanning beds and field trips, but not to get a high-dose hormone drug, with serious side effects.”
That is politics, not best-practice medicine.
Shaunti Feldhahn (scfeldhahn@yahoo.com) is a conservative Christian author and speaker, and married mother of two.
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Opposing view
Andrea Sarvady: Court’s Plan B decision was right