America’s Pediatricians Claim the Right to Contracept Your Kids

Parents are Not to Know (But They are Expected to Pay) 
By Steven W. Mosher Weekly Briefing: 2012 (v14)
Population Research Institute

The day before Thanksgiving, I got a call from a harried reporter. “The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a statement on “Emergency Contraception,” he said. “I’d like to get your take on it.”

The 10-page document turns out to be a full-throated endorsement of what is euphemistically called “Plan B” (levonorgestrel manufactured by Teva Women’s Health) for kids of all ages. The current FDA rules, which limit emergency contraception to young women 17 years or older, are too restrictive, the document argues.

Those of us (including, I am guessing, a number of pediatricians) who conscientiously object to flooding immature teenage bodies with powerful, steroid-based drugs will not accept this statement on multiple grounds.

....Perhaps the most egregious claim of a statement which makes many such claims is that "at the policy level, pediatricians should advocate for increased non-prescription access to emergency contraception for teenagers regardless of age and for insurance coverage of emergency contraception to reduce cost barriers." Allowing 13-year-olds to buy steroid-based drugs without their parents’ foreknowledge and consent is a violation of parents’ rights and is also not in the best interest of the teenagers themselves.

Finally, someone needs to realize how much of this is driven by the profit motive. Big Pharma pays for many of these studies which assert the purported benefits of providing drugs that they manufacture to as many people as possible at the expense of the taxpayers. Such rent-seeking is typical of the kind of bureaucratic capitalism that we now see coming to dominate the medical space under Obamacare.

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