Social conservatives are determined to protect the ability of rapists to reproduce, and the wishes of the victim apparently don't matter. Plan B contraception has again attracted the ire of the fundies but this time the medical community is fighting back:
ABC News--Fed up with the roadblocks facing women who try to obtain the "morning-after pill," the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists today announced its "Ask Me" campaign, which encourages patients to obtain an advance prescription from their ob/gyn. ... ACOG, which represents more than 49,000 U.S. obstetricians and gynecologists, has long advocated for national over-the-counter access to Plan B, and has accused the Food and Drug Administration of stalling to approve over-the-counter use for political reasons.
Bush's shenanigans with the FDA and Plan B specifically have been well documented elsewhere. Here's what I found weird, even ABC News gets it dead wrong in that same article:
Emergency contraception is not the same as a medical abortion -- the RU-486 pill or similar drugs. Emergency contraception prevents a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman's uterus, whereas a medical abortion causes a woman's body to expel the already-implanted egg.
Emphasis mine. Unless I'm mis-reading this, and I apologize if that's the case, ABC just stated a blatant falsehood.
Prof PZ Myers--Plan B is not an abortion. Plan B doesn't help if one is already pregnant, and it doesn't affect any implanted zygotes. Pregnant women produce progesterone naturally. Plan B gives women the ability to control, to a limited extent, when they will expel a gamete. In purely reproductive terms, it's a bit like a male's ability to control when he will ejaculate, or expel his gametes. That's it. No fertilized zygotes are involved, so that level of the birth control debate isn't even relevant.
Wikipedia--"There is no evidence that the Pill's effect on the uterine lining interferes with implantation or has a post-fertilization effect," says contraception expert Felicia Stewart, MD, codirector of the Center for Reproductive Health Research and Policy in San Francisco. "Documenting it would be a very difficult research task."
It's already tough enough to cut through the tangled web of bullshit conservative lies about science and reproductive rights picked up by their media outlets and endlessly recycled as fact. It's even more of a pain in the ass when ABC helps them out by getting it so backasswards. And especially craptacular work, considering that Brian Williams just reported on this very story on the Nightly News and that segment included a statement to the effect of 'claims that Plan B prevents a fertilized egg from implanting are scientifically incorrect.' Score one for NBC.
Either the reporters of the aforementioned article, Joy Victory and Siri Nilsson, were just sloppy, or they 'accidentally on purpose' relayed the fundamentalist line without regard to accuracy. I don't know which, innocent mistake or purposeful error. But it's an odd standard indeed employed by our traditional media where professional reporters making, I assume, a reasonable salary, get it so wrong, and a guy typing in sandals and boxer shorts in his home for free has to set them straight.
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