When the Obama administration pushed for over the counter sales of the Plan B drug, which may cause an abortion in some circumstances, pro-life advocates feared this kind of thing would happen.
A local news station in Colorado has discovered that a children’s hospital with giving the Plan B drug to 12-year-old girls and all without parental consent. As Fox 21 reports:
One Colorado Springs clinic is offering kids as young as 12 access to the Plan B pill without any parental consent.
That clinic is a division of Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora and offers services to 12 to 24 year olds. It’s a BC4U clinic – meaning “Birth Control For You.”
Tax dollars are helping to fund clinics like these.
Under Colorado state law, children are allowed to see reproductive health services without parental consent.
The children are able to get IUDs (Intrauterine Devices), birth control pills and the Plan B pill for free – all without their parents even knowing.
According to the hospital, the clinic’s primary mission is to “reduce” unintended pregnancies in young women.
“This is a children’s hospital, you can’t have children without parents,” said a veteran physician on the staff of Children’s Hospital who wished to remain anonymous. “Parents who have rights who want to be involved especially with dangerous life changing events like getting pregnant.
Colorado law gives minors the option to not tell their parents. That even includes when they visit their own pediatrician, but at least when they go to their pediatrician’s office, the parent receives a bill reflecting a visit. When a child goes to the adolescent clinic, there is no record of the visit and the parent knows nothing.
We got in touch with Congressman Doug Lamborn about the clinics. He’s been in opposition of the Plan B pill for years.
“One of my biggest concerns is the parents not being involved in these decisions,” Congressman Lamborn said. “Parents need to be involved. They know their children better than anyone else and they are responsible for their children”.
Whether you agree or not with the law or what the clinic has to offer, you are partially paying for it.
Children’s Hospital Colorado said the clinic has two funding sources, Title X federal dollars and grant funding from the Colorado Family Planning Initiative.
“I’m really concerned if any federal dollars are associated with this, it leaves parents out of the way,” Lamborm said.
“Parents are meant to be the fundamental guiding influence of a child’s life. They are responsible for nurturing, educating, protecting, and providing for their children. This system, established at creation by God, is the foundation of every stable, prosperous society,” says Anna Higgins of the Family Research Council. “However, our government has attempted to undermine parental rights and distance parents as much as possible from important decisions affecting their children. This is happening despite the fact that the Supreme Court has long upheld the highest standards of protection for the rights of parents to educate and bring up their children without interference. ”
In 2011, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, denied a recommendation by the FDA that would have allowed over the counter access to Plan B, a high dose “emergency contraceptive,” for young girls. Both she and President Obama stated that the FDA did not present enough evidence to show that this hormone would be safe for girls.
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“In fact, there have been no studies on the effects of Plan B on teens. All safety studies have been done on adults and assume proper use. There is no reason to believe that young girls understand that this contraceptive should only be used once a month and that it is not meant to replace oral contraceptives,” Higgins says. “Parents have every right to be informed and to consent to any decision affecting their child’s health, education, or upbringing. It is important to encourage parent-teen communication regarding the moral and medical issues associated with pre-marital sexual activity, as the consequences of such activity are weighty.”
“Teenagers under the age of 17 cannot even be admitted to an R–rated movie and schools are required to obtain a parent’s permission to administer any type of medication to a child or teen, for good reason. The new Plan B decisions, made without regard to parental or medical concern, will only serve to endanger the health and safety of children. Parents should remain vigilant as this debate continues,” she concluded.
