Yesterday I wrote about the Department of Health and Human Services' decision to overrule the Food and Drug Administration's decision to make Plan B available to anyone of any age without a restriction. Some people wondered if HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was acting on her own or with President Obama's approval, and there was some hope that Obama would direct HHS to back off.
Nope! And not only does the President support Sebelius' shocking move to limit reproductive rights, he is using his daughters to defend his failure to support choice.
"I did not get involved in the process, this was a decision of Kathleen Sebelius," Obama said, referring to the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department.Wow.
"I will say this. As the father of two daughters, it makes sense to apply some common sense," Obama said.
So rejecting science in favor of anti-choice hokum is now "common sense," and the best thing fathers can do for their daughters is restrict control over their reproduction. Awesome.
You know, I don't want 11-year-old girls having the need for Plan B, because an 11-year-old girl who has the need for Plan B is an 11-year-old girl who was raped. But in the imperfect world in which we live, where 11-year-olds are raped and made pregnant, often by the family members on whom they have to rely to get access to emergency contraception, the only real options are giving access to Plan B to 11-year-olds who need it and leaving those 11-year-olds with one less option.
Whether Plan B is available isn't going to change the facts of the world. It's only going to be yet another example of how we routinely consider tween girls simultaneously old enough to be sexual targets, and too young to be allowed to be sexually empowered.
As Shaker Meganology noted in comments: "The absolute only thing this regulation does is prevent [an assaulted] child from taking control into hir own hands by obtaining Plan B for hirself, if zie wants to."
Quite right.
That is, for the record, not "common sense." It's abandoning the most vulnerable children among us and condemning them to further victimization, because we're too uncomfortable with ugly realities to look them in the eye. Better instead to cover them with a veil of mendacious bullshit masquerading as concern.
"Oh noes, what if they take the medicine wrong?" Anyone who is more concerned about a pregnant child being hurt by contraceptives than they are about that child being raped, pregnant, and forced instead to undergo an abortion or a full-term pregnancy and delivery, is living in a silly, stupid, unserious bubble of self-deceit, and no one should listen to anything they have to say on the subject of reproductive rights ever again.
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