What Happens When There Is No Plan B? (or Conservatives made me have an abortion)

Washington Post ^ | Sunday, June 4, 2006 | Dana L

[Fzob]

The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn't want. Well, not literally, but let me explain.

I am a 42-year-old happily married mother of two elementary-schoolers. My husband and I both work, and like many couples, we're starved for time together. One Thursday evening this past March, we managed to snag some rare couple time and, in a sudden rush of passion, I failed to insert my diaphragm.

[Arrowhead1952]

I made a mistake on the original reply. See my explanation here.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1643130/posts?page=83#83

[BigBobber]

This whole article is a joke. I just Googled "morning after pill" and got a whole list of sites that will provide a prescription for this drug.

Apparently Dana L, a liberal lawyer and one of the smartest women in the world, doesn't know how to use a computer.

Furthermore, the husband of Dana L is an irresponsible jerk for not getting a vasectomy when he knew their family was complete and his wife was taking medicine that would make a pregnancy dangerous.

[wintertime]

That is another thing this woman has a problem with - inconvienced by everything and blaming in on the Bush Administration. She is so full of herself, just another one of the I, I, I, or me, me, me crowd.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Hey,,,,when I am sick and can't conveniently get my physician ( most of the time) I go to an Insta-care. In my city they are open to 11 p.m all seven days of the week.

So....this supposedly smart attorney woman couldn't bother herself to find an Insta-Care that would dispense the "Plan B"? She stopped making phone calls after calling her gynecologist, internist, and midwife?

[Doc Savage]

When there's no plan B you won't be committing murder. Typical liberal forgetfulness........I was just swept away by passion.....................huh? You're a 42 year old hag! Get a life.

[Arrowhead1952]

I think this liberal woman thinks the "religious right" has infringed on her rights and blames everyone except herself.

Of course, when in a liberal's mind are they responsible for ANYTHING?

[Doc Savage]

As always, you are RIGHT! This is a totally concocted story. Sheer nonsense propaganda for RU!

[Arrowhead1952]

this supposedly smart attorney woman .....stopped making phone calls after calling her gynecologist, internist, and midwife so she could blame the religious right and the Bush Administration.

[marty60]

Don't blame Bush for your own personal guilt.

[HitmanLV]

Hard to take this seriously because her attempts to get her pill was just inconvenienced. She could have taken steps to get the prescription, but failed to do so. Blaming someone else (anyone else) because she had to do some legwork one day. She fails to do the legwork and looks to shift the blame somewhere (anywhere).

Sounds like a lot of people I know, actually. In any case, this article doesn't pass the smell test, though.

[Always Right]

Everything in the story is waaaaayyyyy to conventient. Every possible scenerio from her being over 40 and on chloresterol drugs, so by no fault of her own she is high risk. To her momentary laspe from being normally responsible just happen to have occured on Thursday, so when her doctor said no on Friday the 72-hour window would be over before Monday. Every possible swipe including the snipe about 'security reasons' at the abortion clinic, aluding to those evil abortion protestors. This story is one more of the mounting numbers of examples of the new journalistic standard of 'False but accurate' made famous by Dan Rather.

[Freedom of Speech Wins]

According to her own statements it was the FDA that prevented her from having the pill she wanted.

So why is that the fault of conservatives and how do the Democrats escape being blamed here too?

[Ichneumon]

The morning after pill can also prevent implantation of an embryo.

You're thinking of RU-486. This is "Plan B", a "morning after pill" that works on a very different principle. There have been rumors that Plan B "might" prevent implantation, but there's no evidence whatsoever that it does, and quite a few studies which show that it doesn't.

That's why some pharmacists and physicians want nothing to do with it.

If "some pharmacists and physicians" are acting on myths instead of reality, they're not fit to practice.

[Ichneumon]

[All the while, I was thinking that if religion hadn't been allowed to seep into American politics the way it has, I wouldn't even be there. This all could have been stopped way before this baby was conceived if they had just let me have that damn pill.]

Yeah Dana, it's religion's fault! You're absolutely crazy.

Her point is a valid one, even if you wish to sidestep it, and even if there are other parts of her essay which are poorly argued. The "Plan B" contraceptive should be available, and is being blocked unnecessarily due to misunderstandings and knee-jerk objections, many of them based on religious premises.

[Ichneumon]

Hey sweetie .. how about taking personal responsibility ??

She was trying to, but many people are blocking a means by which she could. Thus her point.

If you really didn't want to have more children .. there is also the snip snip option that you or your hubby could have had done

There are many valid reasons that couples decide not to take this step, and it's unconscionable to demand that they do so just because a means of contraception is being withheld for no good reason.

[Ichneumon]

I think the despicable writer of this made up crap wants to force every doctor and pharmacist to carry/subscribe the morning after pill. Right now, large numbers do not because of moral/religious issues. Read between the lines, disgusting.

Those "moral/religious issues" are inexcusable, because they're based on a) gross misunderstandings about how this particular contraception actually works, or b) a "morality" that tries to force their own beliefs about contraception onto other people.

[thile44]

"To this day, I don't know why my doctors wouldn't prescribe Plan B -- whether it was because of moral opposition to contraception or out of fear of political protesters or just because they preferred not to go there.

In any event, they were also partly responsible for why I was stuck that Friday, and why I was ultimately forced to confront the decision to terminate my third pregnancy."

Here is someone else to blame for her situation.I would wonder if she has ever accepted responsibility for anything in her life, especially if it had a less than perfect outcome.

[Crolis]

One of the posters here mentioned that the story was highly embellished if not completely fabricated.

I did a little research on what she was saying. She mentioned the following things that I found interesting:

• I arrived shortly before 10 a.m. in a bleak downpour
• We were told that the lone doctor was stuck in Cherry Blossom Parade traffic.

I did a little searching for weather history on the day of the Cherry Blossom parade and assumed that the writer was referring to the 2006 parade, which occurred on 10:00AM, Saturday the 8th of April. According to weather data, it was raining in the morning, but accumulations were about 0.01 inches up to about 9:43, when the weather type switched from "light rain" to "rain". Temperature was hovering around 57 degrees at that time. It started picking up a bit as 10:00am approached, but I think bleak downpour is a deliberate embellishment on the part of the writer.

The parade was due to start at 10:00AM that day, with the parade route traveling down Constitution Avenue between 7th and 17th streets. I'm not sure where the Planned Parenthood clinic is actually located, but this raises a bit of suspicion to me.

The intensely personal nature of the writing, the anonymity of the writer, embellished details, and the blatant appeal to pity definitely places this piece in the suspicious column for me.

Heh, perhaps we need a color coded suspicion level chart for articles posted from the lame stream media.

--

For those interested, I got my weather data and parade information from these two links:

• Weather Data
• Parade Information

[Ichneumon]

this supposedly smart attorney woman .....stopped making phone calls after calling her gynecologist, internist, and midwife so she could blame the religious right and the Bush Administration.

Unfortunately, in the case of this contraceptive, the "religious right and the Bush Administration" does bear a lot of blame.

Also unfortunately, it's behavior like this which is giving conservatism a bad name, and reinforcing the negative stereotype of conservatives as overly moralistic busybodies who want to control other people's lives and force other people to obey their personal views on sex and reproduction. This kind of stuff doesn't help bring more people to the conservative movement, and it drives a lot of people away.

[SuziQ]

So to absolve herself of any blame in the death of her child, she blames the PRESIDENT? Too bad her two kids won't have the pleasure of having a baby brother or sister, because their Mom was too self-centered to be bothered at her advanced age of 40.

[Ichneumon]

As always, you are RIGHT! This is a totally concocted story. Sheer nonsense propaganda for RU!

This isn't about RU-486. Why don't you try reading the article before you go off on a rant?