April 20, 2005
New Blog
There's a new blog at the site What Is Partial Birth Abortion that will be updated with abortion news.
This blog is run by my husband. I've been having an amusing time with him ever since I started my blog because even though he has a BA in computer science, can fix any computer, programs all day, installed Movable Type for me, etc; he still doesn't quite get the concept of trackbacks. I'm not quite sure why. I've explained it to him several times, and a few days later he's asking me another question about it. But he's wonderful, so I'll easily forgive him this one little quirk.
I'll be posting over at Say Anything today and tomorrow. All of those posts will most likely be gratuitously double posted here, but go on over there anyway and check out the other guest posters. And heck, stick around for when Rob comes back. It's a great blog.
Oh, and in case you didn't notice, there's now an "About" link on the main page so you can find out all about me.
Posted by illuminaria at 12:48 PM | Comments (1)
April 14, 2005
More Capricious Pharmacists
I’m still wondering why it’s so terrible to allow pharmacists to not fill prescriptions if they have moral objections to what they will be used for. Yes, I understand that it might inconvenience people who want to get their prescriptions filled right away. But … so what? Did humanity create government to prevent people from being inconvenienced? Are we going to start forcing every single gas station owner to put condom dispensers in the bathroom? Or how about we force every single grocery store to carry organic health food. Wouldn’t want anyone to have to drive a few extra miles for expensive carrots.
Now a bill has been introduced in the House and Senate by Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ).
House and Senate backers unveiled a bill dubbed the Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act (ALPhA) on Thursday. It would allow a pharmacist to refuse to fill a prescription only if the prescription can be passed to and filled by a co-worker at the same pharmacy.
I guess you better not ever work alone if you have a moral objection to contraceptives or the morning-after pill. Forget about opening your own small business.
"What have we come to in this country?" Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat and House sponsor of the bill, said Thursday morning at a rally on Capitol Hill. "We are merely saying, 'let the laws in this country stand.' Let a woman be treated with dignity. When she has a prescription from her doctor, that privacy should be respected."
I’d like to know what we have come to in this country when we try to force people to do something they think is immoral. Let a pharmacist be treated with dignity, as a real person with valid morals, instead of a pill dispenser. If our hypothetical woman wants her privacy respected, then she can go to another pharmacist. (Not that I really see how it’s disrespecting her privacy to not sell her something.)
"Nobody has a right to come between any person and their doctor," Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat and co-sponsor, said Thursday. "Today they might not fill prescriptions for birth control pills. Tomorrow it could be painkillers for a cancer patient. Next year it could be medicine that prolongs the life of a person with AIDS or some other terminal disease."
I’ve never heard of a pharmacist being morally opposed to painkillers or AIDS medication, I doubt it’s going to start popping up once the government “allows” them to not sell something. It’s not like crazy religious nuts people are getting morally opposed to more things lately. (It might seem that way, but only because they keep coming up with more things for people to be morally opposed to.) What is this, a slippery upslope argument?
But even if they did, that still doesn’t convince me that the government should be dictating to people what they are forced to sell and what morals they are allowed to have affect their actions. Amazing, I know, with these strongly reasoned arguments they’re coming up with.
Posted by illuminaria at 08:19 PM | Comments (1)
April 13, 2005
Hysterical Democrats Object to Big-Government
Let’s revisit the morning after pill debate I wrote about recently. Take a look at this column by Susan Paynter, if you can stomach it.
Senators Patty Murray and Hillary Clinton (both mothers of daughters) dug their heels in last week against the Food and Drug Administration's interminable foot-dragging on over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception. And when they did, they stood firm on an increasingly crowded line.
Apparently now to have an opinion on abortion and contraceptives, you not only have to be a woman but you have to be a mother of a daughter. Well shucks, I guess that puts me right out.
It's a line that growing numbers of Republicans and Democrats alike are drawing against governmental poking in our private lives.Poking not in order to protect us but to tell us how to behave.
Oh I love this one. See Democrats may poke into our lives, but it’s just to “protect us,” not to tell us how to behave.
Poking not based on compassion but on control.
Those evil Republicans, on the other hand, just want to tell us what to do so that they can feel the wonderful rush of power coursing through their veins. Every time they see a woman who is pregnant (because she couldn't get an abortion) and barefoot (because her welfare got cut) they say MUHAHAHAHA and jump into their pool filled with money.
Poking to prevent our access to a legal, safe, long-ago approved "morning after pill."
See, not allowing the morning after pill to be sold without a prescription equals preventing our access to it. That’s all doctors are there for, you know, to prevent our access to drugs. All that stuff about making sure it’s properly prescribed and the patient is monitored for ill effects is just a bunch of malarkey they made up to fool the dumb public. Amazing how well it has worked. Even I believe it.
Poking that allows disapproving pharmacists to override us and our doctors when it comes to the filling or refusing of ordinary, everyday birth control prescriptions.
My God, the humanity! Imagine the government poking into our private lives by allowing pharmacists and health care workers to act according to the dictates of their own conscience. Why they should be not poking into private lives by forcing them to do what the government deems right. Excuse me while I faint from horror…..
Poking into whether we can obtain a divorce while we're pregnant.
*sniff* Thank goodness for smelling salts. Anyway, I suppose I might just be misinformed here, but I don’t recall ever seeing anything about a law to prevent women from getting a divorce while pregnant. The conservative media probably covered it up.
Even poking into when and if we can pull the plug on our own suffering and hopelessly ill loved ones.
That’s right! The government is blocking us from pulling the plug on our own suffering. Oh, and I believe I recall that there’s also something about not letting us kill loved ones without their consent…but really, I’m more concerned with my suffering.
(Check out the Hillary Watch catagory for more stuff Hillary Clinton has been up to.)
Murray and Clinton are not trying to solve all of the above. Their target is a limited one. As long as Bush FDA nominee Dr. Les Crawford keeps bottling up a decision (one way or the other) on the sale of Plan B emergency contraceptives, they will bottle up his confirmation. There it will sit, stoppered on the top shelf of the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee.And the move has been met with whoops by many who've grown sick of a patriarchal, supposedly "anti-big government" administration that may have shrunken federal intrusion. But, now that it's the size of a suppository, it apparently fits snugly into our hospital rooms and bedrooms, doctor's offices and drugstores.
*snort* Interesting anal-ogy there.
Still, when Murray pressed him, Crawford couldn't say when the FDA may act on Plan B. "Are we talking two weeks? Two years? Twenty years?" she asked him.Initially, she was told there were "issues" the FDA couldn't discuss in public.
Then, in private, Murray says she was told that it wasn't the science the agency was still struggling with. It was the "behavior."
In other words, an agency whose role is to protect the public with science is using ideology instead. That would be the same agency that's under fire for putting questionable drugs back on the market under the rationale that the public has a right to make its own health decisions. (Unless, apparently, that public is female.)
Perhaps “behavior” refers to the problem of people abusing over the counter drugs without consulting a doctor, perhaps it refers to the problem of teenagers taking these drugs when their parents wouldn’t approve, or would at least like to know about it, perhaps…. Nah, that’s ridiculous. It’s obviously all about ideology and Republicans wanting to stomp on women.
Crawford could not give Murray a date for an up or down vote on over-the-counter sale of the morning after pill. Certainly it wouldn't happen before today -- the magical April 13 date originally set for his confirmation. So Murray told him, in that case, she couldn't give a date for his confirmation either.
Ah yes, these wonderful senator moms (of daughters) aren’t at all abusing their power. Not at all, that’s something only evil Republicans do.
Apparently Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, also a member of the Health, Education and Labor Committee, is content to wait, saying he trusts that the "FDA will do the right thing," eventually. But thankfully, the senator moms are not.
Perhaps Kennedy understands that the approval process at the FDA takes a while and that they need to consider a lot of factors, one of them not being the ideology of hysterical abortion rights activists.
And apparently, increasing numbers of red and blue voters now are suffering symptoms of discomfort as well. "What's next, (refusal to sell) condoms?" columnist Ellen Goodman wondered recently in print while "Real Time" comic host Bill Maher sarcastically suggested druggists stop selling makeup since "only sluts paint their faces."
Condoms and makeup equals a pill whose long term effects haven’t been studied. Uh-hu.
I'm not talking about notes, calls and e-mail from readers in liberal Seattle, either. Recently I got a card bearing the American flag and the lyrics of "The Star-Spangled Banner," mailed from Sultan.
Ha! Look, a tacit admission that liberals are less likely to be patriotic.
Inside was an article titled "Access Denied" about doctors and pharmacists refusing to write or fill birth control prescriptions. "As to women's options," the writer said, "we surely need less intervention from such as the so-called 'moral majority.' "
Again, pharmacists and health care workers acting on their conscience equals governmental intervention from the “so-called” moral majority. Is anyone not getting the contradiction here?
Like me, the writer must have been proud last week, when Sen. Murray drew the line.
Yes, I’m sure you were both proud of Murray’s tantrum.
Posted by illuminaria at 02:27 PM | Comments (2)
April 07, 2005
Murray & Clinton Plan to Hold Up FDA Chief Confirmation
From Bloomberg news.
Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Hillary Clinton said they would block confirmation of Lester Crawford as Food and Drug Administration chief because of delays in approving over-the-counter sales of Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s Plan B [emergency] contraceptive. Murray said Crawford, who has been acting commissioner since March 2004, wouldn't pick a date for issuing a decision. The senators will hold up confirmation until there is a ruling on the filing, she said. The FDA didn't provide any new information during the meeting and isn't requesting any new information from the manufacturer, Murray said.
Plan B is an emergency contraceptive. It works differently than RU-486, which is an abortifacient Plan B prevents ovulation, prevent sperm from reaching the egg, and prevent implantation just like birth control pills do. It has no effect on a fetus.
Proponents, such as NOW, wish Plan B to become over the counter because since it must be taken within a few days to be effective, it would be easier to get without needing a prescription. However, I note that the manufacture’s drug insert says that it is not necessary to get a physical examination before being prescribed the drug. What’s the big deal about calling your doctor, asking for it, waiting for a little bit, and then going to the pharmacy?
I’ll tell you what the big deal is, it’s teenagers. NOW wants them to be able to get whatever contraception they want whenever they want without having to ask their parents permission. (They want the same for abortions too, for that matter.) However, as with this issue in regards to abortion, there are moral and health issues here. Personally I’m against abortion and for contraception. However, there are certainly parents who are morally against contraception. Should their parental rights be ignored? Plan B, while not having a lot of serious risks, does have risks. Since it is similar to progestin-only contraceptives that increase the risk of ectopic pregnancies, (which can be life-threatening) it is hypothesized that Plan B could also have similar risks, though there haven’t been studies done to confirm or disprove this hypothesis. (Again, I am getting this from the manufacture’s drug insert.) If a kid can’t ask her parents to take her to a doctor for a contraceptive, how will she be able to ask them to take her to the doctor for an ectopic pregnancy?
The first proposal to make Plan B over the counter had no age limits at all. This time the limitation that the purchaser must be over the age of 15 has been added. Are 16 year olds really that medically and morally responsible?
I find it odd that the FDA would be considering approval of an emergency contraceptive being released without a prescription, without approving the same for regular contraceptives. I suppose the idea would be that since it is supposed to be a one time thing, the patient doesn’t need to be monitored for long-term effects. But what’s to stop someone from taking them long term? The manufacture says that Plan B is not recommended for long term use, is not as effective as the Pill for long term use, and they haven’t even done studies on long term effects. And they want to hand these out like aspirin? At least we know the long term effects of aspirin, and some kid isn’t going to be afraid to tell their parents that they’ve been taking aspirin for 12 months when they need to go to the doctor for a stomach ulcer.
Despite my reservations on the subject, there’s been no reason to suspect the FDA of bringing conservative politics into this, and Crawford has said recently that the drug will probably be approved.
(Check out the Hillary Watch catagory for more stuff Hillary Clinton has been up to.)
"The science part is generally done," Crawford told Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who had pressed him on the issue. "We're just now down to what the label will look (like). This is going to be a very unusual sort of approval."…
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., also questioned Crawford aggressively, asking whether a formal decision on Plan B would be announced before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions votes on his nomination, probably April 13. Crawford said he doubted a decision would be forthcoming by then because of the application's complexity.
Sounds like Murray and Clinton are the ones bringing politics into this, not the FDA. Don't you just love all these Democrats abusing their power?
Posted by illuminaria at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2005
Discrimination Against Fetuses?
I read today about a bill introduced in Maine that is being supported by The Pro-life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians. (Thanks to Ravenwood’s Universe.) Apparently the bill is intended to prohibit the abortion of homosexual babies. There are lots of interesting points to discuss in regards to this.
Jackie Malone, executive vice president of PLAGAL said, “We recognize that at this time the gay gene has not been isolated, but with all the advances of genetics, we believe that it may just be a matter of time before a test for the predisposition of homosexuality will be developed.”
I applaud Jackie Malone’s use of the phrase “predisposition of homosexuality” rather than something like the “gay gene.” Ms. Malone seems to understand that no study has ever produced evidence for any gene that controls sexuality.
For instance, today I looked up an interesting study that came out in 2000 called Genetic and Environmental Influences on Sexual Orientation and Its Correlates in an Australian Twin Sample. It’s quite good for several reasons.
Many studies on this subject in the past have used samples that are very self-selected. For instance, they advertise for twin subjects in magazines oriented to homosexuals. Since it is easy for subjects to discern the probable subject matter of such a study, they are more likely to volunteer if both are homosexual. Such studies have found that if one twin is homosexual, the other is up to 80% likely to be homosexual as well. Other more reasonable values have ranged from 30-60%.
This study, however, contacted twins in the Australian Twin Registry that were already being used for another study and asked them if they would be willing to fill out a questionnaire regarding sex. There was some indication that there was a modest selection bias as people who returned the questionnaire and consent form had slightly more liberal attitudes towards sex, but the difference was small.
Sexual orientation was measured on the Kinsey scale, which measures homosexuality in a more continuous fashion, with scores ranging from 0-6, 0 being completely heterosexual and 6 being completely homosexual. 92% of the subjects scored 0; 94% of the males and 97% of the females scored 0-1, putting aside once again the myth that homosexuals comprise 10% of the population.
Their results were that if one twin was homosexual or bisexual, the other twin was homosexual or bisexual 20% of the time for men and 24% of the time for women. It must be noted that each of these sets of twins were reared together, so those values are based on both genetic and environmental factors.
Interestingly enough, the study also asked questions about childhood gender nonconformity (being a tomboy or a sissy, for example) and found it was much more likely to be experienced by both twins than by only one, but even then the value is nowhere near high enough to suggest that the trait is controlled highly by genetics, or even by environment.
Therefore, not only is it quite hard to pin down one or two simple reasons why people become homosexual, but it’s pretty unlikely that we’re going to come up with a test that will measure a child’s predisposition towards homosexuality before birth.
But even if we did, it’s pretty hard to say that abortion is completely ok in every case, depending completely on the whim of the mother, unless her choice is affected by the child’s possible sexual orientation, or gender, or ethnicity, or whether or not it has Down’s Syndrome for that matter. If abortion is wrong, then it’s wrong no matter why the choice is made. If abortion is OK, then it’s always OK. If we’re just discarding a ball of cells that isn’t a life yet, then who cares if the ball of cells is gay or female or black?
If we’re making it illegal to make discriminatory reproductive decisions after conception, when that zygote or fetus isn’t “really a life,” then what is the real moral difference between that and timing sexual intercourse so that you’re more likely to have a boy, or a white woman only using protection when sleeping with a black man, etc. Are we going to make those things illegal too?
Now I realize that this group is actually pro-life, but they should think seriously about the impact a bill like this might have. All of a sudden the government goes from outlawing certain acts, to outlawing certain acts in the presences of certain thoughts. Having certain thoughts or motivations may be morally wrong, but the sort of society that legalizes those issues is not one I want to live in. Does anyone, pro-life or pro-choice, actually want to head in that direction? I think the group’s efforts might be better spent on protecting all unborn children, rather than just ones that might turn out to be homosexuals. They are all worthy of protection for the same reasons – because they are human.
For people who are pro-choice, but would be for a bill that protects only homosexuals or females or minorities from being aborted, ask yourself how morally logical that is? And while you’re at it, consider the fact that abortion already disproportionately affects minorities, just by being what it is.
Finally, let’s look at the actual text of the bill:
Maine LD 908 An abortion may not be performed when the basis for the procedure is the projected sexual orientation of the fetus after birth, based on analysis of genetic materials of the fetus in which sexual orientation is identified through the presence or absence of a so-called "homosexual gene."
How exactly are we to determine what the basis for the procedure is? Is an abortion automatically determined to be because of sexual orientation if an analysis of genetic material is done and then an abortion is performed? What if the genetic analysis also determined that the fetus was likely to get a disease, or that it was female when the mother wanted a male? Will the government start keeping records on abortions and medical tests and investigating the links between the two? Will they go around interviewing women and their friends and family to find out why they had the abortion? Quite frankly, this seems much more invasive than the government controlling abortions in the first place. Again, does anyone want to give the government control over not just certain things that we do, but also certain things that we think?
Posted by illuminaria at 01:25 PM | Comments (33)