Plan B

By Leila Marie Lawler ( articles ) | Aug 01, 2006

Today’s New York Times article on the FDA move to endorse the sale of the “morning after” pill (also known as Plan B) is interesting for what it doesn’t say, and for what it says.

First, nowhere in this two-page piece is the health of women mentioned in any other than the most politically charged way.

Feminists equate women’s health with only this: her ability to have sex, contraceptives, and abortions. Not one word about the risk of blood clots and stroke, a menstrual cycle out of whack (rendering future knowledge of pregnancy more difficult, and thus, need for Plan B more likely), or ectopic pregnancy.

This last, by the way, is the ultimate irony of pro-abortion rhetoric. Ectopic pregnancy is a leading cause of maternal death in the West (perhaps the leading, depending on how it’s defined); the risk of ectopic pregnancy is significantly increased by abortion. Yet abortion supporters cite ectopic pregnancy as an example of how pregnancy is more dangerous than abortion!

Besides the stunning omission of the absolutely vital discussion of the medical repercussions of Plan B – completely unthinkable in a similar inquiry into the FDA’s policy towards something apolitical like, say, Celebrex, the article lets slip something quite revealing:

Dr. Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, said she gave many of her patients who use condoms for contraception Plan B prescriptions to keep in their purses.

Really. You don’t say. Now why would condom users need “emergency backup” abortifacients? Hmmm? Maybe condoms aren’t what they’re cracked up to be after all! How quickly proponents of abortion and contraception drop one issue when they are on the scent of another.