Quite the travesty: Ohio teens might need a prescription to use a tanning bed but can pick up the morning-after pill like candy from the corner convenience store.
To their credit, Ohio lawmakers are considering an age restriction on indoor tanning beds, a bill that would prohibit minors from using sun lamps except by prescription.
This bill came a little more than a week after the Obama administration dropped its appeal against a federal-court decision to mandate unfettered access to the over-the-counter availability of Plan B.
While special interest groups such as Planned Parenthood applauded this decision for increasing women’s access to health care, many Americans like myself cringed at the news, knowing full well that it means increasing a girl’s access — a child’s access — to a morning-after pill. Knowing that it means pushing mom, dad and doctor alike out of the picture. Knowing that it is another shot fired in the war on childhood.
The Obama administration leaves the preteen uteri of girls across America open to the effects of a drug never studied on teens, while the General Assembly looks for ways to preserve childhood — to preserve the smooth, uncracked, unweathered baby skin of our children and to ensure that decisions they make as youths don’t come back to haunt them in the form of skin cancer.
If we have the courage to fight the war against skin cancer, we also need to fight the war against childhood.
LifeNews Note: Mike Gonidakis is the president of Ohio Right to Life.
