Following last Friday's decision by the FDA to postpone a decision to allow the "morning-after pill", aka Plan B, to be sold without a prescription, the FDA's director for the Office of Women's Health, Susan Wood,
resigned with the following bitter words:
I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled.
[snip]
The recent decision announced by the Commissioner about emergency contraception, which continues to limit women's access to a product that would reduce unintended pregnancies and reduce abortions, is contrary to my core commitment to improving and advancing women's health.
A government beholden to the Dobson theocrats finds itself paralyzed, unable to either contradict solid science with a straight face, nor to outrage its theocratic constituents by allowing teenage girls to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy, even after date-rape or other such violation.
I can see Santorum, Frist, Brownback et al wrangling over how exactly to make sure state and local, (or maybe the FBI, a new moral crimes division?) authorities come a knockin' after Walgreen's provides them with the requisite identification on all purchasers of Plan B.
The sexual--and sexist--hypocrisy in this ridiculous issue-that-should-be-nonissue is the reality that the same teenage girls can buy condoms in virtually any drugstore in America.
So it's okay to plan for sex, but if the girls is coerced, intimidated or outright raped, she needs a prescription?
F'king outrageous.
Kudos to Ms. Wood.