The Food and Drug Administration deserves a round of applause, a standing ovation and a dozen full-bloomed red roses for its smart decision to deny the morning-after pill or emergency contraception over-the-counter status.
It brings warmth to the heart and tears to the eyes to know that there are still some institutions of government that truly care about the health and safety of all women -young and not-so-young.
According to an article in the Washington Post, Steve Galson, acting director for the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research said, The decision I made had to do with looking at all the data and reading all the transcripts
Galson said.
He said he was especially concerned about the lack of information in the application about the younger age group between 11 and 14 where we know there is a substantial amount of sexual activity.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, is quoted in the same article offering his extreme and incorrect view of the FDA decision. Clearly this White House is more interested in appealing to its electoral base than it is in protecting women's health.
Sen. Kerry seems to be missing the obvious and main point of denying that emergency contraception be placed over-the-counter. The decision was made out of regard for a woman's right to know comprehensive health facts that affect her, her mother, her sister, her best friend and her daughter.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of American Web site (http://www.plannedparenthood.org) gives a fact sheet about emergency contraception and lists many effects and risks of using the morning-after pill. They include nausea, vomiting, headache, fatigue, abdominal discomfort, vaginal bleeding or spotting, breast tenderness, dizziness and changes in the menstrual cycle.
These symptoms could have a significant effect on teenage girls' reproductive systems and it is going to take studying more than 29 teenage girls out of 585 to ensure that they will not be harmed by the promotion of what some activists and lobbyists call women's rights.
Planned Parenthood and other reproductive rights advocates want to argue that the FDA decision stems from ideology and not science. However, science and reality say that that morning after pill has the apparent possibility of being harmful to teenage girls.
Dr. Dave E. David, of Norfolk, Mass., is a gynecologist/obstetrician who has been featured on CNN and Fox News as a medical news analyst. He said that right around the time that a teenage girl starts her period, her body begins to produce the chemical makeup of her vagina and cervix, which is not stable until about the age of 17 or 18. Dr. David said that the difference between teenage girls and adult women is not their chemical makeup, but their amount of sexual activity and number of sexual partners.
According to an article in Perspectives on Sexual & Reproductive Health, in a sample conducted in 2003, the reported age of first sexual intercourse ranged from eight to 19 years and the average age to begin having sexual intercourse was 14.1 years.
And in a recent USA Today article, half the teenagers surveyed used condoms the last time they had sex -meaning half were engaged in unprotected sex.
Constant use of emergency contraception (as Planned Parenthood warns) may cause periods to become irregular and unpredictable. There could be further complications because not enough testing and studies have been done with teenage girls.
Basically, dismiss the excuse of ideology, because the medical and scientific evidence combined with current sexual trends of teenage girls proves that emergency contraception should not be over the counter.
-Thompson is a senior journalism major. Send her an e-mail at latoya.thompson@ohiou.edu.
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LaToya Thompson
