Is the Morning After Pill Coming to a Vending Machine Near You?

Opinion   |   Eric Metaxas   |   Jun 18, 2013   |   2:56PM   |   Washington, DC

I seldom get hot under the collar on the air. But a recent decision by the Obama administration has got my dander up.

Last week, the President threw America’s parents and their daughters under a bus. And I’m hopping mad about it—and not just because I have a young daughter of my own.

First, a little history: In 2011, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the Food and Drug Administration’s request to make the “Plan B One-Step” drug available to all women and girls without a prescription, no matter their age. Plan B is a so-called emergency contraception drug that its maker admits could “inhibit implantation” of a fertilized egg in the womb. Sebelius agreed with the decision to distribute the drug—but insisted girls must be at least fifteen to purchase Plan B One-Step.

Well, that proved too much for federal judge Edward Korman (who is a Reagan appointee, by the way). In a decision that dripped with contempt for those concerned about the impact of the drug on young girls, Korman removed ALL age restrictions on the sale of the drug. He claimed they were “politically motivated” and “scientifically unjustified.” And to add insult to what will surely be many injuries to America’s daughters, the Obama administration has just announced that it will not appeal the judge’s ruling.

Now, if you’re like me, you were somewhere between depressed and outraged in hearing this. My 14-year-old daughter can’t go on a field trip without my permission, but soon she’ll be able to legally buy the morning-after pill without my knowing anything about it. Even 11- and 12-year-old girls will be able to pick up Plan B along with their candy bars and lip gloss at the neighborhood drug store.

What’s next? Selling abortion drugs in junior high vending machines? (“No way!” you say? Well, they’re already in college vending machines. But maybe I’d better not give them any ideas.)

Even President Obama, the most abortion-minded president we’ve ever had, said that there ought to be an age limit on this Plan B. As he noted in 2011, the reason Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius insisted on an age limit was because “she could not be confident that a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old going to a drugstore should be able . . . to buy a medication that potentially, if not used properly, could have an adverse effect.”

But if the President knows this drug is potentially dangerous, why did he abandon the fight to protect our daughters? Frankly, I’ve known ten-year-olds who haven’t mastered the art of putting the lid back on a tube of toothpaste. And yet Judge Korman and President Obama are going to trust these kids to carefully read the instructions on a potentially dangerous drug, and take it properly? Are they kidding?

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Plan B will have another destructive impact—and this, too, will harm our daughters. By law, children and younger teenagers cannot consent to sex; if they’re pregnant, it’s a case of statutory rape—or worse, violent rape. Making Plan B available to young girls gives sexual predators another way to hide what they’ve done from their victims’ parents and doctors—and the police.

The sad reality is that even if there were an age restriction, teens would do what they already do with the purchase of alcohol: Get somebody older to buy the drugs for them. But we ought to be angry at what an arrogant federal government is teaching our kids. The law is a moral teacher, and it’s teaching kids that parents are irrelevant.

You and I live in a time when government is actively undermining the family. We need to fight back. Congress can pass a law insisting that no child under eighteen be allowed access to this drug, and that it be sold only with a doctor’s prescription. Please urge your congressman to sponsor a bill to get this done.

LifeNews Note:  Eric Metaxas is best known for two biographies: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery about William Wilberforce. He also wrote books and videos for VeggieTales.