This is a day old, but still of interest. For a few years it seemed like RU-486, a.k.a. the Morning After Pill was going to be made over-the-counter for all women in the current administration, a position I found incomprehensible. I mean let's put aside completely whatever one feels about abortion. Love it or hate it, let's ignore that moral component and focus solely on the issue of the woman's health.
I mean let me personalize this because it is personal. Early in my marriage, my wife was pregnant. We were very happy, so much so that I had a name picked out if it was a girl within a week and pretty soon we told her family the good news. And you know, in this Filipino culture it's an even bigger deal than it is in the culture I come from. And then literally the next day she miscarried. We probably are never going to have children, except very likely by adoption.
And you see, that is what an abortion is, an artificially-induced miscarriage. And having seen what an awful experience it was—I mean wholly apart from the emotions surrounding the loss of her baby, it was a real physical trauma and the hormonal shifts were rough—I am extremely skeptical of the claim that any woman should be getting an abortion without at least a doctor's prescription. But what the FDA proposed was beyond the pale. Right now a woman over the age of sixteen (meaning seventeen or older) can obtain the drug over-the-counter, while girls who are younger than that had to obtain a prescription. The FDA recommended changing the rule to allow all girls to obtain it over the counter and to the credit of Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Health and Human services, she overruled the FDA. And one need only read from the official press release to see how morally incomprehensible the FDA's position was:
The average age of the onset of menstruation for girls in the United States is 12.4 years. However, about ten percent of girls are physically capable of bearing children by 11.1 years of age. It is common knowledge that there are significant cognitive and behavioral differences between older adolescent girls and the youngest girls of reproductive age. If the application were approved, the product would be available, without prescription, for all girls of reproductive age.
And asking a girl who is only eleven years old to deal with a drug like this without any guidance from a physician seems insane. Again, putting aside what you think about abortion, and I suppose what you think about girls having abortions without their parents' consent, an eleven year old girl is just not ready to handle those kind of weighty issues.
