Now everyone has a Plan B

Almost a century after Margaret Sanger’s controversial campaign for birth control, we’re still freaking out about women having the agency to decide when they want to start a family.

Following the Obama administration’s decision to allow current court rulings to stand, American women of all ages will soon have over-the-counter access to the morning-after pill, which can prevent conception if taken within 72 hours of intercourse.

Plan B One-Step is the most well-known morning after pill and the drug on which the controversy is centered.

Just to be clear, Plan B is not the abortion pill. Plan B cannot stop pregnancy after it has started.

Rather, Plan B prevents pregnancy from ever happening in the first place.

The expansion of access to this modern medical miracle is great for a number of reasons. 

Before now, women had to be at least 17 years old to gain access to the pill without parental permission.

Now, all individuals, regardless of age, can access the drug independently. 
 
I think fewer teens becoming pregnant is a good thing.

However, some states have laws allowing pharmacists to refuse access to drugs for their own moral or religious reasons, called “Pharmacist Conscience Clauses.”   

Many women who need access to drugs like Plan B are denied because the pharmacist working that day happens to be morally opposed to women not getting pregnant. Even in Indiana, which does not have any refusal clauses, many pharmacists have been known to refuse access even to prescribed birth control. Now that Plan B is OTC, women don’t have to worry whether or not the “cool” pharmacist happens to be working.

Fewer hoops to jump through means more expedient access, which makes it less likely pregnancy will occur — the sooner you take Plan B, the more effective it is.

Unwanted pregnancies decrease, stability of households improves, people are happier, society is better, everybody wins. Hooray America.

I do not understand why some people believe allowing everyone access to a simple pill is so morally objectionable. Fox News’ Laura Ingraham warned on “Fox & Friends” that this ruling was good news for rapists and pedophiles.

Can someone explain this to me in a way that doesn’t sound like girls who are the victims of rape must have the babies they are unwillingly impregnated with? 

The ignorance of this comment is astounding, implying that infants can be used as evidence against perpetrators of sexual assault. No conception should be encouraged so that a baby can be used as Exhibit A. 

I would think most girls and women who are raped don’t want to have a child by their rapist. This new ruling makes it easier to prevent that from happening.

Ms. Ingraham’s comments, and other Fox contributors’ tacit approval, implies that birth control is the domain of deviants, stigmatizing an innovation that could help stem the social ills that are so often decried on shows like “Fox & Friends.”

I urge everyone to embrace this change in policy. Easier access to emergency contraception will do much more good than harm.

­— casefarr@indiana.edu