Why can't American women have the emergency contraceptive Plan B over-the-counter? Three words: "Teen sex cults." Actually, four words: "Mythical teen sex cults." Alas, I am too old to join a teen sex cult. Why didn't they have those when I was young? Oh wait, they don't have them now.
We've discussed the strange phenomenon of wingnut fascination with bestiality, specifically sex with dogs. And recently we've been treated to the ick inducing sight of seven year old girls dressing up in ball gowns and pledging to their fathers to remain "sexually pure" until daddy turns them over to their husbands.
Via
Septic Tank at Kos, here's another peek into the strange, disturbed
world of rightwing moralist sexual imagination: teen sex cults. It has
even infiltrated the hallowed halls of science at the FDA:
The FDA is only supposed to consider the safety and efficacy of drugs.
In the memo released by the FDA, Dr. Curtis Rosebraugh, an agency medical officer, wrote: "As
an example, she [Woodcock] stated that we could not anticipate, or
prevent extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on
an 'urban legend' status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based
cults centered around the use of Plan B."
"This was the level of scientific discourse," Heller said
in an interview, referring to concerns attributed to Woodcock. "I find
it very odd that these people who are supposed to be responsible
scientists and doctors are making up wacky reasons."
They believe that the morning after pill is an abortion. But they would
be against it even if it weren't because it encourages promiscuity. Or
it allows men to exploit women. Or it's unsafe. Or it will give women
emotional problems. Or physical problems because women who have
abortions are more likely to die than women who don't. Except they
aren't. But no matter, even if that isn't true, there are always a
thousand reasons why women should not be allowed to have sex. Pick one and run with it.
"The
morning-after pill is a pedophile's best friend," Wendy Wright, senior
policy director for Concerned Women of America, a public policy
organization, said in a statement after learning of Galson's decision.
"Morning-after pill proponents treat women like sex machines."
Pedophiles
and sex-machines. Hoo baby. But hey, if it's fantasies of teen sex
cults that rev these gruesome, obsessive imaginations, have at it. It
would be nice if the scientists at the FDA got their jollies elsewhere,
however. This is important.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute reported: "The younger women are when
they first have intercourse the more likely they are to have had
unwanted or nonvoluntary first sex, seven in 10 of those who had sex
before age 13, for example."
This is given as a reason to avoid making Plan B available? That girls
are being forced into sex at a young age? Are they totally nuts? Let me go through that again.
The younger a girl is when she first has sex, the more likely that she
is to have not wanted it. Therefore we should make it easier for those
younger girls to get pregnant from those unwanted encounters?
Where do they come up with this stuff? [Scratches head] That's difficult to believe - when you enter "teenage sex cult" into Google, the hits are in seven figures...
OK then, Oppose Plan B[ackseat]! Coupes only!
Indeed. Certainly, SUVs encourage teen promiscuity too.
We've discussed the strange phenomenon of wingnut fascination with 
