Obama Admin OKs Vending Machine Selling Plan B Morning After Pill

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jan 29, 2013   |   2:42PM   |   Washington, DC

The Obama administration has approved a request by a college in Pennsylvania to sell the Plan B drug through a vending machine. The Food and Drug Administration will let Shippensburg University continue to dispense the morning after pill via a machine that it installed in the school nurse’s office.

As The Hill reports, the FDA decided not to intervene following a “politically motivated uproar” over the vending machine.

FDA looked at publicly available information about Shippenburg State’s vending program and spoke with university and campus health officials and decided not to take any regulatory actions, the FDA said.

Students at the university can obtain Plan B without waiting for an appointment by depositing $25 in the machine.

The Etter Health Center at Shippensburg, which has 8,3000 students, sells the drug along with condoms, decongestants and pregnancy tests. College spokesman Peter Gigliotti said in comments to AP that the drug is available to anyone over the age of 17 without a prescription. The machine was installed after the student government association requested it.

“The machine is in a private room in our health center, and the health center is only accessible by students,” Gigliotti said in a statement. “In addition, no one can walk in off the street and go into the health center. Students proceed to a check-in desk located in the lobby and after checking in are granted access to the treatment area.”

Dr. Roger Serr, Vice President of Student Affairs at Shippensburg, said, “The machine is really used as much for privacy as anything else.”

Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America condemned the sale of the drugs, that can cause early abortions in some cases.

“SU is now offering curbside abortions in the form of morning after pills (Plan B), which are being discreetly sold to students in a vending machine located at the campus’ health center for $25 a pop,” she said. “I really can’t understand what’s private about putting money into a machine to purchase a lethal drug and then watching folks bang on it when the pill box gets stuck.”

“But really, privacy isn’t the matter at hand here,’ she added. “What I and thousands of the students SFLA serve find most outrageous about this story is that Shippensburg University has placed a higher priority on what they perceive to be politically correct than on the safety and well-being of their female students.”

“To allow an abortion pill on campus to be sold through a vending machine without even so much as a doctor’s exam is beyond comprehension. Birth control requires a prescription and a consultation between the patient and doctor before ordering. Plan B is a high-dose version of the birth control bill intended to stop ovulation or abort a newly created human being after intercourse,” Hawkins continued. “Pretty clearly, not only have universities become so immune to abortive medication that they allow the sale of it on their campuses, but they do so with a machine located in a back room of their health center – without the bat of an eye and with the expectation that those watching you cram crumpled bills into a Coke machine in order to kill your child wouldn’t think twice about it, either.”

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Hawkins concluded:  “Shippensburg University’s decision to sell Plan B – an emergency contraception that results in the murder of pre-born children and one that touts a slew of harmful effects on women – in a vending machine on campus is reflective of how dangerous the disease of abortion has become .”

ACTION: Contact Shippenburg University with your concerns:  717-477-1301 or email Shippensburg University’s President, Dr. William Ruud at [email protected]