"Plan B" Gets OTC Approval

Hallelujah, and a huge “Thank You” to Senator Clinton for her tireless efforts on this issue. On Thursday the FDA approved the sale of the “Plan B” contraceptive for over-the-counter sale to adults. Like alcohol and cigarettes, look for motivated teenagers to find ways to skirt the sale to adults only, and they have my blessing. If any minor asks me to buy “Plan B” for them, I will not only make the purchase, I will pay for it and a box of condoms.

In case there is anyone left out there who doesn’t know what “Plan B” is, it is a high dose of the same hormone used in birth control pills to suppress ovulation. When taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, a woman can prevent ovulation or implantation. This has the potential to prevent approximately half of the three million unplanned pregnancies that occur in the United States every year. Lowering the incidence of unplanned pregnancy should lower the abortion rate.

Of course this development will not sit well with the rabid religious right, but quite frankly I don’t give a flying f*&k what the r-cubed lot thinks, and a large preponderance of Americans are starting to see the fundamentalist religious types of all stripes as a threat to our freedoms and our very Democracy. Hopefully when these pious piss-ants sue to stop the sale, the court they draw laughs in their smug, sanctimonious and hypocritical faces. The r-cubed lot has had way too much truck with our elected representatives for a couple of decades now, but thankfully it appears that trend is reversing course. (Am I the only one who thinks that they have an unnatural obsession with other peoples’ sex lives?)

Senator Clinton gets the glory on this one, but a lot of ordinary women embraced this issue and took the time to make a phone call and/or send an e-mail to their senators and representatives. We quietly let them know that we were there, and we were paying attention to their antics. We let them know that we did not appreciate the political games that were being played with our bodies and the bodies of our sisters, daughters and friends. Women are a powerful political force, and when we decide we want something, we generally get it, eventually. There may not be a lot of fanfare, we may not pound on the table and yell at the top of our lungs, but we appear to have a lock on “quietly effective.”

And given the state of American politics today, “quietly effective” is a cool drink on a scorching day.