When There's No Plan B

Common sense dictates that when emergency contraception is unavailable, more people get abortions.

Common sense is right.

The author of the piece is a 42-year-old mother of two who (once) forgot to use her diaphragm. When she tried to get Plan B the next day, she was told her doctor wouldn't prescribe it...and it turns out Virginia law gives doctors the right not to prescribe medication conflicting with their beliefs. Of course, she wouldn't have needed a prescription in the first place if the FDA hadn't overruled its staff recommendation to make Plan B available over the counter.

So, being a) 42 with b) as much family as they could handle and c) on several medications potentially harmful to a fetus, she made the difficult decision to abort.

Getting the abortion was its own special hell, thanks to Virginia's 24-hour waiting period (she would have had to take two full days to get an abortion, so she went to DC instead), security concerns, inadequate supply of providers...and of course the protestors:

I shuffled to the front door through a phalanx of umbrellaed protesters, who chanted loudly about Jesus and chided me not to go into that house of abortion.

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.

And in case that wasn't clear enough:

It was a decision I am sorry I had to make. It was awful, painful, sickening. But I feel that this administration gave me practically no choice but to have an unwanted abortion because the way it has politicized religion made it well-nigh impossible for me to get emergency contraception that would have prevented the pregnancy in the first place.

While we have succeeded (so far) in fending off challenges to Roe v. Wade, the anti-choice right has been very effective at erecting barriers to women's right to choose: improperly influencing the FDA to keep Plan B off the market; so-called 'conscience laws' that give a pharmacist's (or doctor's) 'conscience' veto power over everyone else's; waiting period laws; intimidation and harassment of providers that drastically reduces availability of abortion. This means a lot of women have abortions they wouldn't have needed otherwise. As I've said before, groups espousing policies that will result in more women needing abortions don't get to call themselves 'anti-abortion'; the only consistent thread in all of the obstacles they support is reducing choice. They are opposed to women controlling their own bodies, and 'life' is the fig leaf they use pretend otherwise.

(Hat tip: the ever-vigilant Amanda Marcotte.)

[That's all, folks]