I should also note that some teens are using anal sex as a solution to the lack of access to birth control…if you are worried about unprotected sex the risk vectors are much higher with this form of “birth control”
Right here:
[QUOTE=John Mace]
I’ll leave aside the fact that you just generalized from “the Plan B pill” to “medication”. I’m assuming you don’t think minors should have access to any and all medications without parents being informed. Right?
[/QUOTE]
I support the right of people under the age of 18 to use medicine that is safe enough to be sold OTC, which Plan B would be, if not for political interference. This is not a safety issue, it’s pandering.
:dubious: But is it the very religious that are getting pregnant, or is it the very religious that are preventing others from access to birth control - people who don’t believe in abstinence (or any definition of ‘waiting’ - many parents want kids to wait til a certain age)?
Kids can’t even buy Sudafed.
It is the religous who are getting pregnant, along with those who live in areas where they are the majority.
Kids who are given access to sex education and birth control are actually waiting longer than the kids whom have their access to education and birth control limited by religious dogma.
I posted links and cites above, and I asked you for any evidence that supported your stance and you ignored both.
[QUOTE=CitizenPained]
Kids can’t even buy Sudafed.
[/QUOTE]
Is Plan B a chemical precursor to Meth?
Nope. I didn’t say anyone had a right to do anything. I said parents might want… Which is true. I didn’t even say I agreed with such hypothetical parents. I was, in fact, musing about what might be politically possible to do, not what we should do under the most ideal situations.
Well, that’s not what you said before.
CP: Sudafed can’t be sold “OTC” in the normal sense of that word. It doesn’t require a perscription, but adults can’t buy it without ID. It would not be sold to children.
Cite. The first article you said did not say that. There’s no proven correlation between “very religious teens” and “teenage umarried moms”. But it may be in the Bible belt, which is home to many poverty-stricken minority areas, that there is a large unwed mother population. I grew up in a religious area where teenage pregnancy was very small. We had one teenage pregnancy in high school out of 400 kids and she had to be one tough cookie to take the heat for it. For myself, having a kid at 19 was just not how Jewish families did things if they could help it. I still bear the stigma, even if I have been married.
[QUOTE=John Mace;14552194
CP: Sudafed can’t be sold “OTC” in the normal sense of that word. It doesn’t require a perscription, but adults can’t buy it without ID. It would not be sold to children.[/QUOTE]
Well, I can walk into a pharmacy and show my ID and get Sudafed because I’m over 18. I just think it’s weird that kids can’t buy Sudafed but (according to the Dope) should be able to buy Plan B without parent’s knowledge.
Personally, I have mixed feelings on the issue.
Has anyone here said that minors shouldn’t be able to buy Sudafed? You’re just throwing that out as part of the status quo.
I misinterpreted you then. I apologize. I disagree with those hypothetical parents.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
Well, that’s not what you said before.
[/quote]
What did I say before? I think we are talking past each other here.
Here’s my thing: Plan B has a VERY small window of use where it is actually effective. When you require teens to talk to their parents about the fact that they are having sex AND that they had an accident, and then require them to get a prescription, you are essentially removing it as a viable option. And, as someone who very much wants to reduce teenage pregnancy, that seems like a big step in the wrong direction.
In a perfect world, teens would have a talk with mom and dad and get on birth control and even have back-up before they ever became sexually active. And they would use it perfectly, and the world would sing in perfect harmony and teen pregnancy would be eradicated. I try very, very hard to create that type of a situation in my own home. But I know that not all homes are like mine. There are kids being abused, neglected, and even raped. And for those girls, I do not feel like some parents’ squickiness about teen sex, or about their kids getting pills without permission, or whatever overrides her right to make reproductive choices that help her. I realize it’s a political minefield, but I still think it’s wrong, and I am disappointed, deeply, in my president.
You may want to go back and look again, here is another link, the religiosity had more impact than poverty.
I am not going to justify the pseudoephedrine or ephedrine restrictions, but IIRC part of the reason they did restrict it to 18 and over was due to the legal issues that surround collecting data on minors.
When you buy it they will log your purchase, if they have a reason to belief your a “smurf” or one of the large number of individuals who travel around buying small quantities to bypass the large purchase limits they could.
IIRC you can buy OTC goods while under 18 as long as they do not use pseudoephedrine or ephedrine as the sole active ingredient, depending on which state you are in.
The reasons for putting Sudafed and other OTC cold medicines behind the pharmacy counter have to do with the concern about people using those medications to make illegal drugs. It doesn’t have to do with concern over minors taking the meds for a cold.
Plan B is a drug that is very safe for almost anyone who needs it. The risks are low, and the benefits are high. Plan B is not dangerous for teens to take, and is in fact safer than most of the OTC meds sold in the pharmacy. Hell, Tylenol is a more dangerous drug than Plan B, but anyone can purchase it. The only reasons that I can tell that people have against making Plan B available to anyone who needs it is our backwards attitude and denial about teenagers and sex.
Personally, I try very hard to talk to my step-daughters about sex and protection, and damn near anything I can think of that they might need to know. Ideally, I’d like them to come to me if they needed birth control or Plan B, but if they didn’t feel comfortable doing that I’d absolutely want it available to them to buy on their own. There’s just no downside to it that I can see. By the time one of them would need Plan B, the sex has already happened, and the most important thing at that point is making sure no pregnancy results from it. Again, yes, I want them to come to me, but I’m not naive enough to think they will always feel comfortable doing that. And I want them to know what to do in the case that they can’t talk to me or their dad about it.
And for all the young women out there who have abusive home lives, or no one at all there for them to talk to, or one of the million other reasons that they’d be seeking Plan B on their own—I want it to be available to them with as little trouble as possible. That’s across the board, for my daughters and yours, it’s very important that girls have access to the things they need, the things that conservative parents or abusive parents won’t give them. No exceptions.
States. Not individuals.
I think that women should have access to their own birth control options, yes. I agree with what you are saying here. The FDA letter approved for girls 17 and older - not shaving much off the 18 age mark there. But like I said, there’s something slightly unnerving about it all.
Read it again. I said according to the Dope, kids should be able to purchase Plan B OTC without parents’ knowledge.
So what? According to some people here, kids should be able to buy plan B. Has any of those people said kids should not be able to buy Sudafed? You should know that the war on drugs is not generally viewed favorably here. As for me, I think we’ve gone waaaaay overboard on the Sudafed thing.
16 year olds having kids of any kind or unwanted kids specifically should unnerve you more.
I think John Mace hit on the obvious “politically palatable” compromise, but since there really isn’t a good scientific justification it’s kind of hard to get the FDA to rule that way.
The decision was rather craven, and I’m disappointed in Obama and Sibelius.
Do you view young teenagers being pregnant as preferable to young teenagers taking Plan B?
As many as it takes.
In all seriousness, cite that increased post-sex contraceptive/abortion availability leads to more unprotected sex? I’ll wait.
I have a one-year-old daughter. If this bullshit policy is still on the books in ten years, and FDA approval for Plan B for all ages continues to be extant, I will buy several doses of it, give it to her, and continue to do so every time the expiration dates run out without checking to see if they’ve been used.
I support the right of my own daughter to purchase/use Plan B without my knowledge. I don’t expect her to, but I support her right to do so. It’s like someone else said upthread–at the point your daughter needs Plan B, she is **already **making reproductive choices without your input and Plan B’s availability doesn’t change that one iota.