FDA to allow Plan B birth control for 17-year-olds

FDA to allow Plan B birth control for 17-year-olds

AP News source

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Women's groups cheered the government's decision to allow 17-year-olds to buy the "morning-after" emergency contraceptive without a doctor's prescription, but conservatives denounced it as a blow to parental supervision of teens.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 23-4-2009 by LeaderOfProgress]

Hmm. Not so good. The question now is what is the legal age of consent? With that in mind at what age is a child an adult? I thought it was 18. I have been under the understanding that a child becomes a young adult and can only make legally binding decisions at the age of 18. Would a drug that alters the health or normal "cycles" of a youth not be considered a responsibility of the parents to decide weather or not the girl under the age of 18 should have it administered to them?

After all are we not responsible legally, for a childs health care until they are 18? I have to pay the bills for my family and feel that descisions that could cause more medical bills are my final decision not my 17 year old child.

Is this not speaking volumes as to what we see is proper in our youth these days? Since when do we "expect" our 17 year old children to be in situations that could allow them to even think they need this pill?

Come on people it is time we reign in our children and teach them some morals and standards. Our children are not worth our inability to overcome our complacecy and lazyness in our parenting. Time for us parents to grow up and raise our children right.

AP News source
(visit the link for the full news article)


[edit on 23-4-2009 by LeaderOfProgress]

Originally posted by LeaderOfProgress
Come on people it is time we reign in our children and teach them some morals and standards.

At 17... That is a bit too late.

Birth Control for girls 17 years of age is a good thing. Condoms are insufficient prophylaxis for pregnancy, etc. BC pills greatly compliment them in this regard.

reply to post by LeaderOfProgress
Hollywood has promoted young sexual activity and people are paying to see it or they wouldn’t be producing it.

Thanks to our urban ghetto culture that has swept the planet - our children - kids not even a dozen years out of diapers are sexually active.

I say give anyone that wants the morning after pill a whole bottle of them.
An unwanted baby is an unloved baby and usually does not live a productive life.

If a "child" is old enough to get pregnant, they are old enough to decide their own future. They've already made one choice on their own, to become sexually active.

Do we need more people on our planet? Do we need more people who were conceived and raised by children that wouldn't / couldn't plan enough ahead to make "good choices" or plan ahead.

Do we need more mixed up, unloved, unwanted people that often end up in our prison system?
Do we need more prisons?

We ought to be promoting free, available mass birth control and really good sexual education. But hey, we're a society that will spend almost half our GNP on military vs education and social services.

Think about the amount of money we have spent on the war in Iraq.
How could that money have been put to better use? Instead of war think of the amount of education, food, clothes and social services our blood money could have been used for.

Instead of our youth watching Beyonce up on the tube jigging around getting them more horney there ought to be commercials bombarding our youth as to the hazards and sadness that results when one does not plan ahead and make good logical choices.

The commercials that are trying to promote making good logical choices(Just say no) are out of touch, out of date and just plain lame, a joke.

We as a society get exactly what we deserve by either mass acceptance or apathy as to how ludicrous our society is being run.

Our TV's, movies and music now promote being sexually active so deal with it.

Stop reading this, go to your boob tube and just flip the channels and count each time within a five minute period either sex or food is promoted.

and that is just what we're picking up consciously - I'm sure more garbage is being promoted on a subconscious level that we're not even aware of.

No, we don't need more unhappy, unwanted, unloved mean vicious people on our planet. We as a society all of us together need to get our shi* together and start making "good choices" and promoting the right stuff instead of the garbage that is allowed to bombard our children.
Two women I work with now have 15 year olds that are saddled with babies, not married so the babies (both boys) have no male figure no daddy.

But hey, it's cool to be a single mom now, Hollywood says so.

Every single child deserves to have both a mother and a father around.

Every single person that pops into our plane of existence deserves to be loved, wanted and cherished.

If that isn't going to happen for that individual than it is better they do not come into being.

What affects one of us affects all of us and until each and every one of us realizes this than things will continue to get worse in general.

Maybe our youth are living for the moment because they have lost hope of a bright and happy future.

[edit on 23-4-2009 by ofhumandescent]

I bet Bristol Palin is having an "AHHH MANNNN" moment No but really...

In this sex sells society they should just go ahead and have the morning after pill available in vending machines. 50 cents, get a pill. Does anyone know how much money that would make?!

This is such a moral grey area I'm really not going to get much further into it... I'll just say it doesn't surprise me and I don't agree with the decision..

reply to post by LeaderOfProgress

So economic concerns are more important to you than the wellbeing of your own child?

Having their own children when they're young isn't easy on them and it sure as hell won't be easy on you. I was personally born to a young mother, and she and my father have done a pretty respectable job of raising me. But that doesn't mean that it was easy for them, or for their own parents who, certainly in the early years, were basically obligated to give them quite a lot of financial support while they balanced the books.

By denying seventeen-year-olds the ability to control their own bodies you're making their lives, and your lives, a lot harder. Blaming this on Hollywood or "Ghetto culture" is ridiculous - teenage hormones are powerful stuff, and I can tell you now, ofhumandescent, that being a single mother is absolutely not cool, it condemns both the mother and the child to an insecure life spent trying to make enough money for the family to eat, whilst also trying to nurture a child and manage the mother's own personal relationships, often with a string of partners who never really love the child that isn't theirs.

The legal age of consent varies from state to state - some like calif have it as high as 18 , whilst some like iowa are as young as 14 - and your comment about teaching moraility to 17 year old sorry but by then its way to late , your average 17 year old knows what they want , how to achieve that and what not to do.

moraility is for 11 year olds who are taking the first steps towards that. leave it till late teens and you might as well be talking to a tree.

In New Zealand sex is legal at 16 and so is the 'morning after' pill, it's a very common thing.
I think it's good, six and a half billion idiots is enough for one planet, don't you think?

reply to post by NathanNewZealand

Aye, same as most of us in the Commonwealth.

What ever happen to teaching your kid to wear a condom. You can buy them a lot cheaper.

Really shouldn't the parent be telling these kids how to have safe sex and prevent pregnancy. Also, wasn't that to point to having sex ed classes in high school health class. I mean my freshman year way back in 1994 they showed us how to put the condom a banana. We all giggled and laughed but we all knew to use them. I think we should evaluate the effectiveness of these classes and what they are teaching if 17 year old's need a morning after pill.

The other thing is, where does it stop. Do we eventually give them to sexually active 12 year old's in the inner city who are having extreme teen pregnancies. But really, would they take them. They already do use condoms, birth control and other contraceptives. Why even have the pill at all.

Originally posted by bigvig316
Why even have the pill at all.

To un# the life of a child?

Originally posted by bigvig316
What ever happen to teaching your kid to wear a condom. You can buy them a lot cheaper.

What ever happened to supervising your children? Why is it that it is ok for any child to be having sex?

I think it's disgusting that a parent would encourage their children to use a condom, rather than put them off of having sex until they are ready.

I told my children that if any of them (the boys) got a girl pregnant, or for my daughter if she got pregnant, that I would kill them, and they knew I was serious!

It seemed to have worked as none of my children want to have children at all, at this time, and all are in their 20's.

They are happily building lives where the pursuit of education and employment are taking precedent, instead of having to raise a "little soul sucker," as one of my boys calls an unwanted pregnancy!

I'm sorry, but handing your child condoms, is wrong because it takes the responsibility of teaching a child off of the parent.

I don't have a problem with this morning after pill, because accidents do happen, and there is always a possibility of rape, but a parent, until the child is 18 should have to ok it!

Originally posted by Blanca Rose
I think it's disgusting that a parent would encourage their children to use a condom, rather than put them off of having sex until they are ready.

Deciding what an adolescent is ready for is hardly the prerogative of a parent.

reply to post by jBrereton


Legally, until a child is 18, it most certainly is.

If parents took responsibility for their children, we wouldn't even be having this discussion, and there would be no need to hand your child condoms, or condone a morning after pill.

Children are born not knowing right from wrong. It is the responsibility of a parent to teach that to their children.

I think this is a good idea. I have mixed feelings on it but I am more for it than against it. I would rather have a 17 year old have access to this pill than have a child they do not want, that will be unloved and uncared for or end up in foster care the rest of it's life. I have seen people's arguments that the parent should know, well what if that parent is against it and makes the 17 year old have the child? You dont know what a 17 year old might do to in a sense get rid of the pregnancy. I just hope teenagers dont use this a form of BC, thinking oh I can just get the pill tomorrow. What they need to do is teach sex ed in schools! I am 30 and when I was in HS is was not taught at any school in my area. We had health class and we never talked about sex in any way. If you brought it up you got in trouble. It was nuts.
On the other hand parents need to talk to their kids more as well when it comes to sex. Instead I think most teenagers use the internet or TV for information.

If handing out morning after pills saves one potential unborn foetus from being aborted, then I am all for it.

Morning after pills are called emergency pills for just that reason.

I agree that parents should be teaching their kids right from wrong but the fact is a parent cannot be around a teenager 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Most of us all went through a rebellious stage, todays kids are no different.

Condoms, the Pill, the morning after pill, whatever it takes to prevent pregnancies is a good idea. Cause otherwise, it'll just end in abortion.

Really what this is is a discussion on abortion. At what point is it okay to kill a child? You can say "All it is is a single cell" but aren't we all made up of just cells? Is it okay to kill it if it's just two cells? how about ten? a thousand? a million? a trillion? Where do you draw the line? You can't legislate something like that, because when you do you're basically saying "This is when life begins." No human can make that decision.

As for the "just another unwanted child" argument: There are countless couples who can afford a child who can't have one and would gladly take an unwanted baby boy or girl.

reply to post by mblahnikluver


Wow, the rules at school for sex education must have changed. When I was in Jr. High School in a suburb of Chicago, we discussed sex. I see you live in Floriduhhhh, so maybe the requirements for teaching sex education to students varies from state to state.

Then again, it isn't just the responsibility of a school to talk about it. Once again, the parents should be having that discussion with the children, also.

Originally posted by Blanca Rose
reply to post by jBrereton

 

Legally, until a child is 18, it most certainly is.

What is laid down in law isn't always what is right. Governmental beaurocracy and common sense are things which often clash.

If parents took responsibility for their children, we wouldn't even be having this discussion, and there would be no need to hand your child condoms, or condone a morning after pill.

I come from a country where the age of consent is set at sixteen. Should it be a parent's responsibility to dole birth control out to their sixteen-year-old 'children'?

No, that would be absurd.

Parents should play an advisory role in the life of a teenager, absolutely, as they probably will for the rest of their life, and rightly so. But should they try to control their children even as they enter into adulthood?

No, because personal responsibility is learnt by your own experiences as much as through what other people teach you. Mistakes need to rectified. This is one way of preventing a person from being burdened with an unwanted child because of a mistake they made, however wise or unwise that mistake was.

Children are born not knowing right from wrong. It is the responsibility of a parent to teach that to their children.

Teaching someone and trying to control every aspect of what makes them a human being until they are eighteen are two different things entirely.

Originally posted by LiquidLight
Really what this is is a discussion on abortion. At what point is it okay to kill a child? You can say "All it is is a single cell" but aren't we all made up of just cells? Is it okay to kill it if it's just two cells? how about ten? a thousand? a million? a trillion?

And any discussion of abortion needs to take into account the future lives of all three parties, the mother, the father, and the future child. Is it right to have three people suffer because two young people made a terrible mistake?

Where do you draw the line? You can't legislate something like that, because when you do you're basically saying "This is when life begins." No human can make that decision.

Then who does?

As for the "just another unwanted child" argument: There are countless couples who can afford a child who can't have one and would gladly take an unwanted baby boy or girl.

Foster carers, no matter how they may try, are not the same as flesh and blood relatives.