Time for Plan C, Mr. President

Dear Mr. Bush,

What are you thinking? That it’s okay to approve the ‘morning after’ pill for over the counter sales since young women under 18 will still need to have a prescription for it? Did you even think this through? It appears not.

Where to begin….

Birth control pills are still prescription drugs. Plan B pills are just higher doses of the same medication. So you take the stronger concentration of something already regulated and allow it to be sold over the counter?!

That will lead to many more abortions of newly formed human life, since this pill prevents a fertilized egg — the conception being of the species homo sapiens and therefore human life — from implanting. So it proceeds to die. There’s no way around that, no matter how the language is spun.

Many women will use the morning-after pill as routine birth control. Did you know that in Scotland, where the morning after pill has been available to teenagers over the counter since 1990, cases of sexually transmitted diseases have skyrocketed?

And the age requirement. How are you and your new FDA chief, Andrew von Eschenbach, going to keep anything sold on the drugstore shelf out of the hands of anyone of any age? The reality is, your decision makes the drug widely available in the marketplace. 

There’s plenty of research available to inform you of these things. Even a simple press release like this one from Pro-Life Wisconsin.

The idea that, without any penalties in place and without any ability for the FDA to investigate whether or not pharmacists are following the rules, that this is not going to get into the hands of teenagers is ludicrous. There are much better enforcement mechanisms in place to keep cigarettes out of the hands of teenagers, and yet we all know how many kids smoke… 

This is such common sense. How did you let this one slip by you? 

Recently, you were so boldly outspoken in shutting down attempts to get federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, saying it “crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect.”

What changed? 

Do you have any idea how huge this decision was and what impact it will have on the mission to protect human life? Did you think this through? I guess that’s a ‘no-win’ question.

But Plan B is a no-win answer. Is there a Plan C? Or how about a Plan CC, as in course correction. The one we’re on has crossed that moral boundary.

In the hope that you will come to your sense on the consistent ethic of life, my plan is to keep you in prayer.

Sincerely,

Sheila Liaugminas