B for Brouhaha

Dear Obama Campaign: Why do you keep sending me emails requesting my support, while making it exceedingly clear that you are not interested in or willing to support me in turn?  Remember my outrage at your "women for Obama" message a few weeks ago, and how frustrated I was at being appealed to "as a woman" even as women's health issues had taken a backseat/been actively thrown under the bus by this administration multiple high-profile times in the past three years?

Consider that frustration cranked up to 11, after the HHS overrode the FDA's decision to allow Plan B to be purchased without restriction, out on store shelves, and you explicitly supported the move, even to the point of using your daughters as justification for a blatantly political election-year ploy.  Remember when you promised that the decisions of your administration would be based on sound science, evidence, and fact - with the implied comparison to ideologically-driven right-wingers?  I certainly do.  So do these Senators.  And I'm genuinely curious what bullshit y'all are going to pull out of your ass to justify your decision to go against what the experts decided based on actual science and research.

Much has been said about The Eleven-Year-Old, and the use of this fear-and-emotion-based appeal has been thoroughly deconstructed already, so I won't say much - only that if you would rather see a child forced to bear a child than allow her a modicum of control over her circumstances, your priorities are seriously fucked up.  Actual abortion or bearing a child at that age are both far more physically difficult/dangerous than a medication which studies have shown to be quite safe, anyway.

The thing is, this overruling doesn't just affect The Eleven-Year-Old.  It also affects teens as old as fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen.  Are you seriously telling me that a sixteen-year-old is mature enough to drive a car - hundreds of pounds of metal moving at high speed, quite capable of killing and maiming if misused or mistakes are made! - but not mature enough to take a medication properly, whether it's because of a broken condom or to protect themself after being raped?  What the fuck kind of logic is that?

And then there's the much-less-mentioned half of the overruling.  The part that would have moved Plan B out from behind the pharmacy counter and onto the shelves.

Allow me to rephrase that: it would have moved Plan B out from behind the gatekeeping of pharmacists, many of whom are anti-choice, and, in some places, legally protected in their choice to deny people access to certain medications because it upsets their delicate fee-fees.  A grown-ass person can be in need of emergency contraception and still be told "No" simply because the pharmacist doesn't like it - and depending on where they are, there may not be a damn thing to be done about it.  Allowing Plan B to be stocked on regular shelves with other medications would have removed this (gigantic, horrible) barrier between grown people and the medication they need, much less teens or children.  That's the other thing y'all chose to block.  You not only told young people "We don't think you should be allowed to control your reproduction without the okay of the adults around you", you also told pregnancy-capable people everywhere "We don't think your need to access emergency contraception is important enough to make it available to you without going through a gatekeeper." 

Well, Obama administration, don't say you weren't warned when your core base gets tired of you pulling shenanigans like this and refuses to come out and vote for you next year.  When your percentages are dropping among blocs like women and pro-choicers, core Dem constituencies...you have only yourselves to blame.