Candy and Flowers: Plan B
[The following is an editorial column by contributor Carly Kocurek and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Austinist staff. --The Editors]
Plan B, also known as the morning-after pill, has gotten the FDA’s stamp of approval for over-the-counter sales sales to women and 18 and older – younger women will have to get a doctor’s note to obtain the contraceptive.
The decision came after three years of debate about whether or not to eliminate or modify restrictions on sales. Women’s advocacy groups had argued that making the pill more widely available could reduce unwanted pregnancies in the United States by up to 50%, while opponents had said something to the effect of, “But, then women might have sex … for pleasure.”
The arguments for and against Plan B went a lot like the arguments for and against the recently-approved HPV vaccine, which should be hitting wide distribution by October. Women’s health groups argue that something would greatly improve the lives and health of women in the United States, and then the anti-sex camp gets up on its collective soapbox and starts ranting about women being promiscuous.
The approval of Plan B and the HPV vaccine represent small steps in the fight against allowing terror tactics to force women into engaging in “appropriate” sexual behaviors. Granted, there are problems. The HPV vaccine is hitting the market in part because advocates stopped arguing that it should be available to men and women both, pushing it as a cancer-prevention treatment for women rather than an STD preventative for both men and women. And, availability of Plan B will be limited for younger women – problematic in part because the age cut off, while widely accepted, is fairly arbitrary, and because high school girls are often risking a lot by confessing to their parents and guardians that they are sexually active. Doesn’t everyone know at least one woman who got kicked out of their parents’ house over a sexual relationship?
Women’s sexuality remains an arena for moral and political battles, disturbing because lives often hang in the balance. The blockade of the HPV vaccine seemed just mean-spirited: “How dare you have sex,” the reasoning seemed to go, “I hope you get cancer.” Granted, sex has consequences. It has risks. Those of us fortunate enough to have received an adequate sexual education – through television, parents, friends, teen magazines or medical texts – know that.
And, while I disagree with those who demand the containment of sexuality in the neat unit of procreative matrimony, I absolutely respect the rights of others to have sex lives of their choosing – you want to wait until you’re married, go for it. But, as the innumerable failures of abstinence-only sex education have made clear, attempts to terrorize the great mass of people into keeping their pants on just don’t work. While the threat of disease and pregnancy are very real and should be considered, they shouldn’t be magnified by blocking the distribution of medical advancements. If we have the technology to make people’s lives better, safer, and easier, we generally should. In the case of Plan B, hopes are high that we can make a substantial dent in the number of unwanted pregnancies, a reduction that could lead to a lower incidence of abortion, which could be a win for folks on both sides of the family values fight.
Will women have more sex because Plan B is available? Possibly, though I doubt many will see that the pill is available and rush out to start going at it like bunnies. Instead, the pill will most likely serve to assuage the fears of women who are already sexually active – sometimes, after all, condoms break.
Plan B should be available via nonprescription sales by the end of the year.
