We now are engaged in a great national debate. It has moral consequences, ethical consequences, health consequences and economic consequences.
That’s right. We must decide whether a 15-year-old girl should be able to walk into a drugstore without a prescription or her parents’ knowledge and buy a powerful drug that induces an abortion and likely will make her sick.
To put this in perspective, we wouldn’t allow her to buy cigarettes or vodka, but the Plan B drug is OK. And to add more perspective, this is a change from our previous decision that a girl should be 17 to get the drug without a prescription or parental knowledge. Our kids sure are maturing, right?
Doctors and politicians are debating the age requirement. What they ought to be debating is whether there is something terribly wrong in a culture where girls need or want Plan B.
If someone is looking for Plan B, Plan A must have failed. Plan A must have involved having sexual relations, with or without birth control.
Perhaps we need a little more focus on a different Plan A, which could be based more on moral behavior than medical technology. Plan A based on chastity really does eliminate the need for Plan B.
