Tag: Children

Federal Judge Requires Non-Prescription Access to Morning-After Pill in a Month

~ Evan Lenow ~ 2 Comments

UltrasoundU.S. District Judge Edward Korman (Eastern District of New York) has ruled that the FDA must make the multiple versions of the morning-after pill available over-the-counter without a prescription and without age restrictions within one month. The FDA had previously decided to make the morning-after pill available to girls younger that 17, but Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebellius overruled the FDA in 2011, setting the age restriction of 17 or older.

The court decision comes as a result of a lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights. According to CNN, Nancy Northrup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, responded to the decision by saying, “Today science has finally prevailed over politics. This landmark court decision has struck a huge blow to the deep-seated discrimination that has for too long denied women access to a full range of safe and effective birth control methods.”

I actually believe Northrup has it wrong. Politics has prevailed in this instance to the detriment of girls and young women across the country. Since the sexual revolution, there has been a movement to separate sexual activity from marriage. The goal has been to make sexual expression the epitome of freedom. Instead, girls and young women are going to find themselves shackled with more emotional baggage and more sexually transmitted diseases. In addition, girls may experience “coerced” or even “forced” use of the morning-after pill by boyfriends, casual partners, or even parents wishing to “limit the damage” from their sexual expression. This is not freedom–it is bondage to culture.

Judge Korman even makes an interesting remark toward Sebellius and the FDA in his judgment. He states:

The FDA has engaged in intolerable delays in processing the petition. Indeed, it could accurately be described as an administrative agency filibuster. Moreover, one of the devices the FDA has employed to stall proceedings was to seek public comment on whether or not it needed to engage in rulemaking in order to adopt an age-restricted marketing regime. After eating up eleven months, 47,000 public comments, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, it decided that it did not need rulemaking after all. The plaintiffs should not be forced to endure, nor should the agency’s misconduct be rewarded by, an exercise that permits the FDA to engage in further delay and obstruction.

Does Judge Korman not believe that the FDA may have actually been seeking the well-being of young girls? His commentary in the court order is chilling. The fact that the FDA was seeking public comment and input on whether or not this was good for 10-16 year old girls is a good thing. However, Korman views it as agency misconduct.

From the outset of creation, God has declared that the sexual relationship is properly expressed only within marriage. This is one way in which marriage is ordered to procreation. The vast majority of individuals seeking the use of these abortion-inducing drugs will not be married adults. They will instead be young people pursuing unhindered sexual freedom who suddenly find themselves shackled by the consequences of their behavior. When you add the category of girls who will be coerced into taking these drugs by those who “love” them, the damage becomes overwhelming.

This decision further undermines the institution of marriage and elevates abortion to the status of relieving a headache with Tylenol. This is a sad commentary on the culture of the “New America.”

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Edward Korman, Tumino vs. Hamburg, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, April 4, 2013.

“Judges orders morning-after pill available without prescription,” CNN, April 5, 2013.

“Federal judge rules morning-after pill must be available for women of all ages,” Fox News, April 5, 2013.

For more information about the impact of the sexual culture on young women, pick up a copy of Girls Uncovered: New Research on What America’s Sexual Culture Does to Young Women by Joe S. McIlhaney, Jr., and Freda McKissic Bush.

Use of “Morning-After Pill” on the Rise

~ Evan Lenow ~ 1 Comment
Percentage of sexually experienced women aged 15–44 who have ever used emergency contraception: United States, 1995, 2002, and 2006–2010, and frequency of use among women who have ever used emergency contraception, 2006–2010. SOURCES: CDC/NCHS, National Survey of Family Growth, 1995, 2002, and 2006–2010.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report last week that flew under the radar of most news organizations. They conducted a five-year study (2006–2010) on the use of the “morning-after pill” (labeled “emergency contraception” in the study—more on that later) and found that 11% of “sexually experienced women aged 15–44 . . . had used emergency contraception, up from 4.2% in 2002.” Thus, in less than ten years, use of this form of birth control has almost tripled.

Other facts released in the study include:

  • Most women who had ever used emergency contraception had done so once (59%) or twice (24%).
  • Young adult women aged 20–24 were most likely to have ever used emergency contraception; about one in four had done so (23%).
  • Almost 1 in 5 never-married women (19%), 1 in 7 cohabiting women (14%), and 1 in 20 currently or formerly married women (5.7%) had ever used emergency contraception.
  • Non-Hispanic white and Hispanic women were more likely to have ever used emergency contraception (11%) compared with non-Hispanic black women (7.9%).
  • Ever-use of emergency contraception increased with educational attainment—12% of women with a bachelor’s degree or higher and 11% of women with some college education had ever used it. This compares with 7.1% of women who had a high school diploma or GED and 5.5% of women with less than a high school education.

We can make a few key observations from this report. First, emergency birth control is on the rise. As this method of eliminating an unplanned pregnancy has become more normalized, the rates of use have gone up significantly.

Second, the use of emergency birth control is especially high in women in their 20’s. As the median age of first marriage gets older (28.7 for men and 26.5 for women as of 2011), the number of unmarried women having a sexual relationship increases. Most of those desire to avoid pregnancy and opt for emergency solutions when other methods fail or are not employed. This trend is likely to continue as marriage and children become less of a norm.

Third, education seems to increase the likelihood of using emergency birth control even though it also increases the likelihood of marriage. Despite the fact that married women are less likely to use the morning-after pill and women with more education tend to get married, the two trends do not track together. It is possible that those with more education using the emergency birth control are moving towards marriage but have not yet arrived at that stage.

So what should we make of this? Does this represent the demise of family and biblical sexuality in American culture? Should the church even be concerned?

In short, the church should be concerned on a few different levels. This issue is not going away any time soon, so we need to be prepared to address it. Let me note a few items for us to consider.

The first issue is a terminology problem. As evidenced in the report, the morning-after pill is labeled as emergency contraception. However, this is inaccurate. Contraception, by its very definition, is something that prevents conception. Plan B, Ella, and other forms of this pill are intended to prevent pregnancy after intercourse; thus, taking into account that fertilization may have already occurred. Therefore, they should be called birth control (preventing birth) rather than contraception.

The second issue is a life problem. The CDC report notes, “Emergency contraception can be used by women after sexual intercourse in an effort to prevent an unintended pregnancy. Roughly one-half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended.” Intended or unintended, pregnancies represent lives. Innocent human life in the form of a developing baby in the womb is that which is eliminated by emergency birth control. Those who are in favor of protecting unborn life should stand in opposition to the proliferation of these drugs. Unfortunately, our culture views children more as commodities than lives. They are financial investments and burdens rather than blessings (Psalm 127:3–5). We need to return to a biblical perspective on children and life in the womb.

The third problem is the lack of information in the church. Birth control is one of those issues we just don’t talk about. However, nearly a quarter of the women aged 20–24 in the survey had used emergency birth control. It’s a tough issue. You are talking about life, reproduction, medical decisions, and other aspects of the private lives of women all at the same time. Just because it is difficult, though, does not mean we should avoid it. My guess is that many of these women represent churches all across the United States. In fact, there are probably women scattered throughout Southern Baptist congregations who have used this form of birth control.

We need to talk about it. We need to inform our people. We need to protect life. In and of itself, it may not represent the demise of marriage and family in culture, but it certainly speaks to a trajectory we are currently on.

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Kimberly Daniels, Jo Jones, and Joyce Abma, “Use of Emergency Contraception Among Women Aged 15–44: United States, 2006–2010,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, February 2013.

Peter Singer on Abortion

~ Evan Lenow ~ 1 Comment

Peter SingerToday is the 40th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. That case and its lesser known counterpart, Doe v. Bolton, opened the door for abortion on demand in the United States. Roe v. Wade deduced a right to privacy from the 14th Amendment that extended to a woman’s decision to have an abortion. Doe v. Bolton defined the health of the mother, the cause by which a woman could legally seek an abortion, to include physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and age issues. Thus, almost any reason could be legally permissible for seeking an abortion. Since January 22, 1973, over 55 million abortions have been performed in the United States.

Part of the abortion debate revolves around the idea of when an embryo/fetus/newborn attains the right to life. Various options have been considered, including conception, viability, birth, and self-awareness. The most common answers for pro-choice proponents have been either viability or birth. The most common response for pro-life proponents has been conception.

In light of this tragic anniversary, I want to go to an unusual source for thoughts on the question of when a new human life attains the right to life. Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. His views on life, abortion, infanticide, and animal rights have shocked Americans for decades. However, Singer offers a stinging critique of traditional pro-choice arguments and an interesting aid to pro-life proponents.

Singer writes:

The central argument against abortion, put as a formal argument, would go something like this:

First premise: It is wrong to kill an innocent human being.
Second premise: A human fetus is an innocent human being.
Conclusion: Therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus.

The usual liberal response is to deny the second premise of this argument. So it is on whether the fetus is a human being that the issue is joined, and the dispute about abortion is often taken to be a dispute about when a human life begins.

On this issue the conservative position is difficult to shake. The conservative points to the continuum between the fertilized egg and the child, and challenges the liberal to point to any stage in this gradual process that marks a morally significant dividing line. Unless there is such a line, the conservative says, we must either upgrade the status of the earliest embryo to that of the child, or downgrade the status of the child to that of the embryo; but no one wants to allow children to be dispatched on the request of their parents, and so the only tenable position is to grant the fetus the protection we now grant the child.

After considering various options for a morally significant dividing line, Singer concludes:

The liberal search for a morally crucial dividing line between the newborn baby and the fetus has failed to yield any event or stage of development that can bear the weight of separating those with a right to life from those who lack such a right, in a way that clearly shows fetuses to be in the latter category at the stage of development when most abortions take place. The conservative is on solid ground in insisting that the development from the embryo to the infant is a gradual process.

Unfortunately for those of us who agree with Singer on this particular point, he goes on to make the case that infanticide should be legal. He holds to the position that a child does not have the right to life until he has reached a stage of adequate self-awareness. He contemplates that such an adequate stage may not be reached until the age of two or three years old. However, for the sake of the overwhelming negative reaction he might get, he is willing to legalize infanticide up to about one month after birth. In my opinion, the outrageous conclusions of his own argument actually help to strengthen the pro-life argument even further because it becomes the only plausible position.

Despite the fact that Singer’s ultimate conclusion is just as horrendous as legalized abortion, his critique of the classic pro-choice argument is very helpful. As this debate continues in the public square, it might be useful for pro-lifers to take note of Singer’s critiques and employ them where appropriate.

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Peter Singer, “Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus,” (from Practical Ethics) in Writings on an Ethical Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 146-64.

Good Reading: Conscience Clause for Abortion Providers?

~ Evan Lenow

Should abortion providers be protected by a conscience clause ensuring they are not “marginalized” for providing abortions? This idea has been proposed by Dr. Lisa Harris of the University of Michigan. Richard Doerflinger responds to this question in a recent article on the Public Discourse. Here are some of the highlights:

[L]et us concede that most other conscience laws, at the state and federal level, speak only of a conscience right not to assist or perform abortions (and sometimes other procedures such as sterilization). Why haven’t Dr. Harris’s allies in Congress also fought over the last four decades to make these laws double-edged?

The most obvious answer is that they have seen no need to do so, because, as our highest court proclaimed in 1973, those who want to perform abortions already have the freedom to act as they wish. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade, reaffirmed in cases such as Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), has barred government at any level from prohibiting (or as Casey says, imposing an “undue burden” on) a woman’s decision to have an abortion, or a doctor’s decision to perform that abortion, at any time up to fetal viability. Even after viability, the doctor must be free to decide that an abortion is needed for the woman’s “health” (defined to include all factors—including physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to her “well-being”), and act accordingly.

Conscience laws have been needed since 1973 precisely because this new “right” of abortion seemed so absolute, so sweeping, that its proponents insisted it should be enforced as a kind of entitlement: When a woman wants an abortion, doctors and hospitals that disagree must abandon their own consciences and serve her wish. Congress and the vast majority of states responded to this claim, in the years following Roe, to affirm that the law’s protection of the woman’s decision does not deprive everyone else of their rights.

Some believe that a doctor’s refusal to perform an abortion forces a woman to act against her will. Doerflinger responds:

By contrast, if government or my employer makes me agree to do something my conscience tells me is gravely wrong, I must directly violate that negative norm—for example, the norm against killing the innocent. I have sacrificed my moral integrity. I have made myself, in my own moral judgment, into a person who kills. It is absurd to say to a pro-life physician: “No problem. You can still refuse to do an abortion next week, or at your medical practice down the road.” Further, if a doctor stands by his or her conscientious refusal, that infringes no one else’s conscience: It simply takes this doctor out of the picture, and forces no one else to do anything at all.

Someone might say: Yes it does. It forces the woman to seek her abortion elsewhere. But that is simply false. The doctor is not making her seek an abortion at all, and may be perfectly willing to offer assistance that in the doctor’s judgment is much better than abortion for the health of her and her child.

Finally, Doerflinger states that the government’s interest is not in maximizing abortions but in protecting life (even though that may not seem to be the case on the surface). He states:

No national governmental body—whether legislative or judicial—has said that government has an interest in maximizing abortions. Nor does public opinion support such a claim, as most Americans (male and female) generally describe themselves as “pro-life,” and few people say there should be more abortions than there already are.

On this point the Supreme Court’s own stance is widely misunderstood. Since 1973 the Court has ruled that government generally may not prohibit abortion. But it also has consistently acknowledged government’s legitimate secular interest in “encouraging childbirth over abortion.” And it has said this interest justifies bans on public funding of abortion, and a variety of regulations and restrictions that fall short of a ban on abortion.

In upholding a ban on federal abortion funding, the Court explained the government’s interest this way: “Abortion is inherently different from other medical procedures, because no other procedure involves the purposeful termination of a potential life” (Harris v. McRae, 1980). This cryptic reference to the unborn as having a “potential life,” a term with no clear meaning, has given way in later cases to a straightforward recognition that by regulating abortion “the State . . . may express profound respect for the life of the unborn” (Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992) (emphasis added).

In its most recent abortion decision, Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), the court upheld a federal ban on partial-birth abortion, a law that it said “expresses respect for the dignity of human life.” Here the justices reaffirmed government’s “legitimate interests in regulating the medical profession in order to promote respect for life, including life of the unborn.”

In short, our laws—and even the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence—do not treat performing an abortion as something that is just as good or “conscientious” as delivering a live baby instead. Government has an interest in promoting the latter and discouraging the former. Lawmakers have no constitutional mandate, and the public has no desire, to treat them as morally equivalent.

The entire article is worth your time, especially as we approach the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision on January 22.

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Richard M. Doerflinger, “Conscientious Abortions? We Don’t Need Laws Protecting Abortionists,” The Public Discourse, January 16, 2013.

Professor Regnerus Exonerated by University of Texas

~ Evan Lenow

Over the summer, Professor Mark Regnerus (University of Texas at Austin) published a paper noting some negative outcomes for children of parents who had same-sex relationships compared to children from biologically intact families. His findings contradict previous research based on much smaller sample sizes that claimed there was no difference in children raised in traditional families and those raised by parents in same-sex relationships. Immediately after the paper was published, Regnerus faced a firestorm of criticism that culminated in formal allegations of scientific misconduct by a blogger known for promoting a homosexual agenda. The University of Texas initiated a formal inquiry, and the results have been made public–there is insufficient evidence to warrant a formal investigation.

Reading the official report from the University sheds clear light on the issue. In part, the report states:

None of the allegations of scientific misconduct put forth by Mr. Rose were substantiated either by physical data, written materials, or by information provided during the interviews. In brief, Mr. Rose believed that the Regnerus research was seriously flawed and inferred that there must be scientific misconduct. However, there is no evidence to support that inference.

While much has been said about the accusations against Regnerus, little has been reported about his exoneration. In essence, unsubstantiated allegations were made against Regnerus by someone who disagreed with his conclusions. Based on his disagreement, Mr. Rose sought to have Regnerus disciplined or even removed from the faculty. While the inquiry was most certainly a burden to the professor, I am sure he is thankful that the integrity of his research was upheld.

Given the scope of Regnerus’ research and the controversial conclusions, I am sure his findings will be debated in the future. However, it should be made clear that any attempt to discredit him or his research on the basis of politics has been declared as unsubstantiated.

I am thankful for Mark Regnerus and his work showing the impact of same-sex parents on children and the value of traditional marriage and family structures for children and society at large.

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“Regnerus Inquiry Report,” University of Texas at Austin, August 24, 2012.

“University of Texas at Austin Completes Inquiry into Allegations of Scientific Misconduct,” University of Texas at Austin, August 29, 2012.

Jennifer Marshall, “Case Closed at UT Austin: Regnerus Exonerated,” The Foundry, August 31, 2012.

Mark Regnerus, “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study,” Social Science Research 41 (2012): 752-770.