Victoria Brownworth

When Republicans and Democrats join forces on reproductive issues, women always lose. Such was the case last week. President Obama decided to go the anti-science route and refute an FDA finding on Plan B while the Pennsylvania legislature voted in SB732, which will likely further restrict abortion in Pennsylvania. Both measures were cited as “protections” for women seeking to end their pregnancies. The end result of both moves, one promulgated by a Democratic president and his Democratic Secretary of Health and Human Services and the other by a predominantly Republican legislature, was the same: covert restriction of women’s access to dealing with unplanned/unwanted pregnancies under the guise of “helping” them. Yet one has to ask how forcing women, especially teenagers, to have unwanted children benefits anyone–woman, child or society.

I’ll insert my disclaimer here: I am pro-life. I would like to see abortion become as rare as possible. As a consequence, I am a strong supporter of Plan B and have been for some time. I think every woman/girl who is physically able to get pregnant, whether she’s my age or the age of my 12-year-old niece, should have Plan B in her dresser drawer for emergencies. (A contraceptive emergency is everything from rape and incest to consensual sex without contraception.)

Plan B is not an abortifacient, nor is it dangerous. The FDA has established that. Plan B is, however, a simple, painless way to prevent an unwanted/unplanned pregnancy from happening and at about $40 per pill, affordable. It can also be purchased at any pharmacy or chain drugstore. Plan B is also about as private a means of preventing a pregnancy (other than regular, consistent use of contraception) as possible. It is ideal for women and girls who feel too shamed, embarrassed or frightened by an unwanted/unplanned pregnancy to deal with decision-making until it is too late for an abortion.

Abortion is complicated, harder and harder to get, especially for poor women, teenagers and women living in rural areas, as well as painful and expensive. Plus, abortion does kill the fetus. With Plan B there never is a fetus because fertilization never takes place.

Every woman in America should be disturbed by these political actions last week. As a woman who has yet to go into menopause but who definitely has no interest in having a child in middle age, I know I would not want to be faced with an unplanned pregnancy. Nine years ago, before Plan B was available, I was raped. Fortunately, I was not among the percentage of rape victims who is impregnated by her rapist. But had I been, I would have had to make the awful choice between carrying the child of my rapist or having an abortion. Many women face these choices every day. The option of Plan B is a tremendous relief.

Pennsylvania bill SB732 was ostensibly in response to the horrific scene uncovered earlier this year at the West Philadelphia Women’s Clinic run by Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his wife. Gosnell was operating outside pretty much every law in place for free-standing ) abortion clinics (that is, a clinic not associated with a hospital, Planned Parenthood or other oversight agency). He was allegedly dispensing drugs illegally and he was allegedly performing third-trimester abortions, which are not legal outside a surgical center or hospital setting because they require that a woman go into actual labor and the complications are manifold and the woman’s health is at tremendous risk.

He was also committing murder. Gosnell is charged with killing seven live infants by snipping their spinal cords and brain stems with scissors. Bodies of infants and fetuses were found in storage at the clinic, which was also filthy. Conditions at the clinic came to light when a woman died from complications of a third-trimester abortion. Gosnell is also charged with her murder. No one can argue that the Gosnell clinic was serving women. Gosnell made money off desperate women, like the one he is accused of killing, who was an immigrant who had tried to get a late-stage abortion in Maryland before coming to Philadelphia.

SB 732 places new licensing and other restrictions on independent clinics that are supposed to protect women from predatory health care providers like Gosnell. But if the Department of Health had been performing regular inspections as required by already existing laws, the Gosnell clinic would likely have been closed down before any of the eight murders attributed to Gosnell were perpetrated.

SB 732 is unnecessary. What is necessary is having health inspectors do the required checks on all health clinics, including those that primarily perform abortions, to make sure that patients are getting the appropriate standard of care in a safe, clean, antiseptic environment with trained personnel. (The Grand Jury found that among other illegalities, the Gosnells’ clinic was staffed predominately with high-school students who often administered anesthesia.)

Pennsylvania already has the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. In addition, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, only ten counties (out of 67) have abortion providers and there are only 20 independent clinics in the state. Which means poor women–and Pennsylvania is largely rural and has a significant poverty demographic–are the least likely to be able to access abortions.

Which brings me back to President Obama’s anti-science/election year decision last week to over-rule the FDA on making Plan B available to girls under 18. In supporting HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s decision to go against the FDA’s ruling, Obama noted that he didn’t want his daughters finding Plan B “next to the bubble gum and band aids.” This is the kind of rabid, anti-science statement one would expect from someone on the extremist right, not a Democratic president who campaigned on standing for science.

First, Plan B won’t be anywhere near “bubble gum and band aids” in any pharmacy. And the Malia and Sasha Obama are not likely to be the girls who would need it. But if the president ever left his insular meet and greets to actually come to the inner city like my neighborhood, or the poverty-stricken rural areas of America, like Mississippi where teen pregnancy is pandemic, he would know why Plan B is so important and why its availability to girls between 12 and 17 is essential.

Fifteen years ago I taught in a program at Lutheran Settlement for pregnant teenagers. The girls took GED and other high school equivalency courses in the morning and in the afternoons they were taught life skills. My students ranged in age from 12 to 17. The 17-year-old was on her third baby. The 12-year-old implied in several talks with me that the father of her baby was her own father. Statistics show that the women most likely to seek out a late-stage abortion for reasons that are non-medical are teenagers. Plan B might not be a panacea that will stop all teen pregnancies, but it is one more stop-gap and also one more safe way to prevent abortions.

In the debate over who controls women’s bodies, women lose. President Obama’s daughters may be in the age range covered by the FDA’s ruling, but they are not the demographic that needs access to Plan B. When Sebelius and Obama both say that parents need to be involved in the decisions regarding their child’s health, they ignore the realities: there are many drugs available over the counter to kids that actually are dangerous, including Tylenol, aspirin and cough medicines. Yet Sebelius and Obama are not suggesting restricting those to people over 18. What’s more, when these two upper-middle-class parents talk about parental involvement, they pre-suppose two things: first, that a teenage girl’s parents care enough to be involved and second, that a teenage girl’s parents aren’t part of the reason she’s had unprotected sex.

 One in four girls is a victim of sexual abuse before she turns 18. Many of the perpetrators are family members. Shouldn’t she be allowed access to Plan B rather than being forced to bear the child of one of her male relatives? The Plan B decision was 100 percent political, as was the 155-44 vote passing SB 732. These were not decisions based on science or protecting women, but politically motivated dictates meant to interfere in women’s personal lives and make a statement to voters in an election year.

Here’s what politicians on both sides of the aisle should be considering rather than votes: No woman wants to have an abortion. Women who choose abortion do so because they feel it is their only option, and so it should be accessible and safe. But Plan B also gives many women a safe, inexpensive, reliable and accessible alternative that is also guilt-free.

Every pro-life advocate should be a huge supporter of Plan B. I’d be handing Plan B (and condoms) out in the schools, if I could. But if Plan B is not an option because too much time has passed, then abortion–which has been legal for nearly 40 years–should be made as accessible as possible. Women don’t make the abortion decision lightly. Making abortion difficult for them only adds an unnecessary burden of shame and guilt. Meanwhile, making first trimester abortions–which are reasonably safe and in which the fetus is not viable–accessible, women are less likely to be forced to have second or even third-trimester abortions where there is a viable fetus and there is also great risk to the health of the woman. Making early abortions more difficult to obtain only means there will be more late-term abortions. If a woman wants an abortion, she will find one–if not at a real clinic, then at the kind of over-priced butcher shop Gosnell was running.

As for Plan B, Obama implies that kids under 18 are not having sex. He seems to forget his own mother was a pregnant teenager before she married his father–and that was 50 years ago when teen pregnancy was considered shameful, rather than the commonplace it has become in 2011.

Yet common as it now is, what we know about teen pregnancy is all bad. Girls who have babies before they are 20 are the least likely to finish school, get a secondary education or be able to find a good job. One baby before a girl is 20 is almost always followed by a second. Children of teenage mothers are at risk physically from health issues, but are also then twice as likely to drop out of school and/or become teen parents themselves.

Teen pregnancy benefits no one. And as so-called abstinence programs have proven, teens will have sex, regardless of what parents or peers say. While the President believes his daughters will never be those girls, he really can’t know for sure. Over 70 percent of girls have had sex by the time they turn 17.

Last week was a bad week for women with these two decisions. And neither will lead where the politicians involved want. Obama’s anti-science rhetoric won’t stop teenagers from having sex, but it may mean that some will be forced to have abortions and others babies, rather than have access to a simple pill. The Pennsylvania legislature can sit back smugly, noting that they are saving women’s lives, but the artificial restrictions it has placed on abortion clinics is likely to create more Gosnells, not punish them. Extremist, anti-science politics–whether purveyed by a Republicans or Democrats–benefit no one. But they have the potential to hurt millions of women. Turning back the reproductive clock is impossible but the results of these continued efforts will be nothing less than catastrophic.

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