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

To LiquidLight......

Actually the OPs article is about an emergency contraception called "The Morning After Pill".
If it's taken within a maximum of 48 hours after intercourse, it prevents pregnancy from even happening.
Hence it would also prevent a possible unwanted pregnancy and abortion.

So this Pill doesn't kill a fetus but prevents a pregnancy from occurring after sex.

Edit to add poster who I was responding to.

[edit on 23-4-2009 by Flighty]

reply to post by Flighty


Then again, it doesn't always end in abortion. My fiance has a daughter that got pregnant when she was 15. So, he and his wife ended up raising that child for many years.

The granddaughter is one messed up piece of work. Wild, dropped out of school when she was about 12 (they claimed she was being home schooled, what a joke]

I see the pattern emerging with this one. The granddaughter is usually MIA from any type of parental supervision.

She will either end up dead, or preggers like her Mom, and it is heartbreaking to see.

I completely blame my fiance and his wife for the way this turned out. They did not supervise their daughter, so they can't complain about the way things turned out.

We fight about this constantly, as this kid is a real pain in the rear!

She should have been an abortion, really and truely!



[edit on 23-4-2009 by Blanca Rose]

reply to post by jBrereton


Nope, sorry, learning is very important, as you said.

With your logic, every teen should experience being pregnant, at inopportune times?

Learning is also about hearing of other peoples mistakes.

What you suggest is they have to live it to learn, and that, in my opinion is wrong.

reply to post by Blanca Rose


Well once their born and here I guess they need all the help they can get, even if they are born into undesirable circumstances. I hope for you and your fiance that things turn out okay for one and all.

Originally posted by jBrereton

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

So the alternative is murder? If we concede that we can't know when life begins, then we must concede the possibility that a child is being killed.

Originally posted by Blanca Rose
reply to post by jBrereton

 

Nope, sorry, learning is very important, as you said.

With your logic, every teen should experience being pregnant, at inopportune times?

Absolutely not. But when it does happen, personal responsibility needs to be taken. When parents are solely in charge, then the child's parents are ostensibly the only ones to blame, which is of no use whatsoever as a learning experience for the real victim.

Learning is also about hearing of other peoples mistakes.

Quite, which is why what parents and peers have to say on any given subject is very important.

What you suggest is they have to live it to learn, and that, in my opinion is wrong.

When did I say that?

Originally posted by Flighty
To LiquidLight......

Actually the OPs article is about an emergency contraception called "The Morning After Pill".
If it's taken within a maximum of 48 hours after intercourse, it prevents pregnancy from even happening.
Hence it would also prevent a possible unwanted pregnancy and abortion.

So this Pill doesn't kill a fetus but prevents a pregnancy from occurring after sex.

Edit to add poster who I was responding to.

[edit on 23-4-2009 by Flighty]

As I was saying to another poster, it's an implanted human egg, i.e. an embryo. It may be only a single cell, but it's still a child. The morning after pill simply stops the embryo from "sticking" so to speak.

Originally posted by LiquidLight
So the alternative is murder?

Call it what you want. I'm not exactly saying that mandatory abortions are the way to go, so please don't twist my words, but you have to admit that flesh and blood and foster parents will never give the same experience.

If we concede that we can't know when life begins, then we must concede the possibility that a child is being killed.

And if we ban contraception, then we chain every single party involved to an unhappy life. Which is really more important, the welfare of those involved or the sanctity of life?

I certainly lean towards happiness instead of blind morality.

reply to post by jBrereton


Uhm, when you said, that it is not the perogative of the parent to decide when a child is ready to experience such things!

Originally posted by Blanca Rose
reply to post by jBrereton

 

Uhm, when you said, that it is not the perogative of the parent to decide when a child is ready to experience such things!

So?

It doesn't automatically follow that because a parent oughtn't to run the life of an adolescent without their input means that that 'child' has to completely disregard their advice.

reply to post by LeaderOfProgress


In my state is 16, but now a days sexually active teens goes as young as 14 or earlier.

We definitely need more options for the lives of young teens falling into the loop of unwanted pregnancies and a life of poverty for them and their offprings.

Specially when our nations is now on a all time high of unemployment and very soon social programs will start to dry out.

The Plan B is a good alternative.




[edit on 23-4-2009 by marg6043]

I think that we have become confused in the complex world we live in today. It's not Hollywood pushing teens to have sex at an early age it's human nature. We have laws (rules written on paper) saying that the age of consent is 18 but the human body naturally starts getting ready for sex at a much younger age. This is why we teach children sex education at a young age. Sex is not pushed on teens by society any more than it is pushed on them by their very own bodies. I think allowing 17 year old teens to get the Plan B birth control is a good idea.

There is another option though. If any of you have read "The Giver" you know what I am talking about. It might be easier for some to give their teens a government distributed pill when they start telling them about these strange sexual dreams. That will take care of the problem.

reply to post by jBrereton


Well, then you have contadicted yourself a bit then.

As bad as you don't want to realize it, parents are in control. They are in control until you are of age, whether or not you want to believe it.

Parents don't always do the right thing for their children, agreed, but no child without life experience knows any better than an adult, when it comes to matters about sex. Sex isn't just sex, it can produce offspring, and therefore, children should be taught to obstain from that being a possiblity, until they are capable of supporting an offspring by themselves.

To condone an over the board day after pill, just for the convenience of a kid being able to experience sex, is silly. Any parent who thinks this is ok, is lazy, is just that. Lazy.

Personally, I also believe in life at the time of conception, so it could be I am biased, but like another mentioned, nobody really knows.

Is it worth killing something you are not sure is alive or not, and excuse for you to have a sexual experience that might lead to a pregnancy?

The pill, in some cases will be abused in this way, and I have issues with murder, at the expense of somebody just experiencing life, without moral judgement or experience in raising a child.

Children should not be having sex that can possibly produce more children.

There are lot's of other things children should be experiencing. Sex, is not everything!

Hello, I don't post much but this one made me want to chirp in. For all of you that say plan B kills a baby you are way off. Once an egg is fertilized the pill has no effect on the egg. There is a drug that does this however, it is called RU-486, or mifepristone.

Plan B works in 3 different ways.
1. The normal menstrual cycle is altered, delaying ovulation; or
2. Ovulation is inhibited, meaning the egg will not be released from the ovary;
3. It can irritate the lining of the uterus (endometrium) so as to inhibit implantation.


So it prevents pregnancy, it does not abort the pregnancy. Big difference.

Originally posted by Blanca Rose
reply to post by jBrereton

 

Well, then you have contadicted yourself a bit then.

How so? A prerogative is an exclusive right. I do not agree that parents have the exclusive right to control the lives of their children once they hit adolescense, there should be mutual respect.

As bad as you don't want to realize it, parents are in control. They are in control until you are of age, whether or not you want to believe it.

Parents don't always do the right thing for their children, agreed, but no child without life experience knows any better than an adult, when it comes to matters about sex. Sex isn't just sex, it can produce offspring, and therefore, children should be taught to obstain from that being a possiblity, until they are capable of supporting an offspring by themselves.

Teaching abstention is a pretty bankrupt form of sex education. It might have worked in the case of your own children, but in more general terms, it is simply ineffective in stopping teenagers from having sex.

To condone an over the board day after pill, just for the convenience of a kid being able to experience sex, is silly. Any parent who thinks this is ok, is lazy, is just that. Lazy.

Eh I don't think anyone supports this because it allows people to have sex more freely underage. The role of the morning after pill is to stop people being burdened with children because of one terrible mistake - I have friends who used this kind of medication in their mid-teens and it wasn't easy on them psychologically, that's for sure.

Personally, I also believe in life at the time of conception, so it could be I am biased, but like another mentioned, nobody really knows.

Is it worth killing something you are not sure is alive or not, and excuse for you to have a sexual experience that might lead to a pregnancy?

The pill, in some cases will be abused in this way, and I have issues with murder, at the expense of somebody just experiencing life, without moral judgement or experience in raising a child.

I think the realisation that you have no idea what you're doing is a large part in deciding to use the morning after pill. You don't want to bring a child into the world because of a mistake, especially if you aren't in a particularly stable relationship at that time.

Children should not be having sex that can possibly produce more children.

Where I come from, sex is legal and very much socially acceptable from the age of sixteen onwards.

There are lot's of other things children should be experiencing. Sex, is not everything!

Absolutely, but teenagers are full of hormones which make them want to have sex. I lost my virginity at sixteen for that reason, after years of sex education, not due to some lack of parental oversight. Sex had been discussed in my home, and it was always about how to be safe rather than some unrealistic expectation that I wasn't going to have sex at all.

[edit on 23-4-2009 by jBrereton]

[edit on 23-4-2009 by jBrereton]

I commented in another thread about this, but here is the way that I see it, shortened down.

- Legal age of consent is x

- BCP is available to girls for:
a.) Acne (prescribed as young as 12)
b.) Pregnancy Protection

- Plan B - stops the release of an egg (if the timing is right and it hasn't been fertilized yet) therefore protecting against pregancny (is NOT an "abortion" pill)

- Plan B - is a highly concentrated progestin based compound

- About 10 regular birth control pills (depending on the brand and progestin doseage) - will have the SAME affect as Plan B

Birth Control Info
Doseage Info

Therefore:

At the legal age of consent - on a state by state (/province) basis - Plan B should be available, as essentially it's doing the SAME job that most Birth Control Brands will do (when taken correctly - as a morning after pill).

Ages should be the same. If the Legal age to consent is 18, then at 18 you should be able to get Plan B OTC, and you should be able to get Birth Control without consent.

Just my thoughts...

- Carrot


[edit on 4/23/2009 by CA_Orot]