At risk of sounding like a Plan B commercial, things don't always go as planned. The single most prepared and educated individuals can have a condom break, or hell, get lost in the heat of the moment and fail to use one at all. While the latter certainly indicates a higher lack of preparedness (or common sense), the point is this: people who engage in vaginal intercourse - be they married or single, monogamous or not, teenaged or adult, using condoms or on the pill or neither - are at risk for a situation that could lead to an unintended pregnancy.
While emergency contraception (trade names "Plan B" or "Next Choice," aka "the morning-after pill") has only been FDA approved since 1999, health care providers have been cutting up contraception pill packs for the exact same purpose since the 1980s. The drug was made available to women over 18 without a prescription in 2006, then, in 2009, the FDA arbitrarily approved the drug for OTC use for women 17 and older.
Fast forward to last week, when "pro-woman" HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overrode an FDA recommendation to make emergency contraception OTC for all. A political move indeed, likely stemming from the fact that we are approaching an election year, and let's face it, Sebelius is "Obama's Girl."
We've heard the cries of disapproval from every anti-choice, anti-woman, anti-sex activist out there: "It will make young girls engage in sex at a younger age." "Women will start using it as their only form of birth control." "It causes early abortions." "It will turn the country into a 24/7 orgy," and so on and so forth.
I'm not about to spend a lot of time refuting these claims, sighting the ways we know that making contraception available to teens does not lead to earlier sexual contact, how it makes no sense to take a $35 pill every time you have sex instead of going on OCs for $20 a month, how it does not cause "early abortions," etc. What I will spend some time on, however, are the reasons the mainstream population allows themselves to be swayed by the Christian Right's barrage of anti-sexuality bullshit.
It comes down to a conversation I had with my dad over Thanksgiving. Neither of us had any clue that the FDA was considering OTC status for emergency contraception at the time. I believe I was going on about how securing a prescription for Plan B involved little more than a 5 minute conversation with an advance practice clinician about your family history, and no, the girl's parents did not have to sign off on it, at least not in North Carolina.
While relatively conservative, my dad has a more progressive outlook on some social issues, and birth control seems to be one of them. However, he seemed shaken by the fact that a 15 year old girl could walk into a Planned Parenthood, talk with a nurse practitioner, and walk away with Plan B without her parents ever knowing. My first reaction would have been to accuse him of being a typical anti-woman wingnut, though he's my dad and I know he's really not a raging misogynist. Such a disconnect led me to take a moment to process exactly what his major objection could be.
Then it hit me.
Dad is a 62 year old man with a daughter who was 15 a mere twelve years ago. When he pictures a 15 year old girl, he pictures his daughter: an awkward string bean of a high schooler who, in his mind, has absolutely no interest in dating, let alone sex. When he pictures that 15 year old procuring Plan B, the thought is horrifying. That girl is, after all, someone's daughter.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, I picture a 15 year old girl and I see one of my teens. They've had a condom break (or didn't use one at all), or maybe they forgot to take their pill or get their Depo shot. Now is no time to tell them that they shouldn't have been doing whatever they were doing to get themselves into that situation. That conversation can be had after they get their EC, and if it's one of my teens, you know we'll be having it. "You were drinking and didn't know what you were doing? Tell me what's wrong with that." "You didn't use a condom? Why on earth... we have a giant bucket right here in the office." "Condoms break, yes... it's rare but it happens. Do you want to talk about an IUD or another method?" "What can we do to help you remember to take your pill? Have you thought about the NuvaRing, or maybe an Implanon?" Nowhere in the above scenarios do I think for even a second that I can change what's already happened, nor do I believe that having made EC available will make them more likely to do it again.
Then I started thinking into the future. Will I become one of those moms who used to be uber sex-positive but now has a kid who she doesn't want to admit is a sexual being? Let's be real... kids are humans. Humans are sexual. There is no "sex switch" that gets flipped on when you turn 18 (or when you get married... but that's a whole other post). We don't like to talk about it, but children masturbate. I was just having a conversation with a friend who told me that her two year old son gets an erection when he nurses; the thought horrified me for about 2 seconds until I checked myself and realized that it's not at all weird... it's a normal biological response to a place of extreme comfort and happiness.
It makes us so uncomfortable to think of kids, especially our own, being sexual beings, but ignoring it (or trying to "save them" from their inherent nature as a living breathing human) is hardly going to change that. If anything, it makes things worse. Too many times young girls fail to ask for EC because they're embarrassed, or they think they need their parents' permission, or they can't afford it, or they don't even know it's available to them. That doesn't make them stop having sex... it makes them more likely to face an unintended pregnancy and have their childhood come to a screeching halt. If all we have to do to keep that from happening is toss our ridiculous notions of "the virtuous child" out the door, well, I think we owe them at least that much.
No comments:
Post a Comment