By now it should be clear to feminists that when Barack Obama thinks about women, he does not view us as independent individuals, but rather as he said in his 2nd term inauguration address–to my consternation—as “our” mothers, wives, and daughters. Obama does not address us–he addresses the men he expects to make decisions for us. I almost wrote a blog on this egregious error in perception and judgment on the part of the President in January, but in order not to be seen as nit-picking, I held my tongue. The recent decision of the White House to continue to restrict the availability of the Plan B , brings this question to the fore again.
Plan B is a brand name for the “morning after pill.” If taken within 3 days of unprotected intercourse, it will prevent conception. There is now a much cheaper generic version as well.
After reviewing the effects and side effects of Plan B, the Federal Drug Administration found it safe and reliable and advised the US Department of Health and Human Services that it should be made available without prescription or age restrictions. In late 2011, the Obama administration and Kathleen Sibelius made the unprecedented decision to overturn the recommendations of the FDA and to allow Plan B to be purchased without prescription only by women age 17 or older. Just over a month ago, US District Court Justice Edward Korman of New York ruled that the Plan B and the generic alternatives should be made available without restriction. Before the ruling could take effect, the Obama administration lowered the age restriction to 15, while announcing that it would appeal Justice Korman’s decision to make the morning after pill as available as aspirin.
So let us ask: supposing one of the daughters of the President had unprotected sex and was under 17 (according to the original position of the Obama administration), or under 15 or over 15 but without a legal ID showing her age (according to recent policy), does the President really think his daughter would come to him within the 3 day limit when Plan B is effective?
Let us be clear. Allowing 15 year olds to buy Plan B with a legal ID begs the question of how a 15 year old who is too young to drive is going to have a valid ID with her age on it. Or how a 17 or even 21 year old girl without access to her own or a family car is going to prove her age?
The President may hope his daughters would never have unprotected sex, and he may imagine that they would speak to him within the 3 day period when the morning after pill is effective if they did. I suspect that President is often “not available” or “in a bad mood” or “tired” for two and three days running. I suppose he hopes that his girls would talk to Michelle. Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn’t. If the President’s daughters are being encouraged not to have sex, even they might hesitate to say that they had violated their parents’ wishes.
Suppose one of the President’s daughters was on a date and “went too far.” Or that she drank too much and was not capable of saying no. Or that (like far too many girls her age) she was gang-raped at a party when she was not capable of saying no. Does the President really think his daughter would come to him or Michelle within three days to ask permission to buy the morning after pill? Let’s face facts. After making “a mistake,” most young girls would rather hope they are not pregnant than tell their parents. Are the Obama daughters any different?
In any case, focusing on the Obama daughters obscures the point that not all girls are Obama’s daughters.
Some girls who need the morning after pill have been raped by their own fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, or boyfriends of their mothers. Others live with parents who view sex before marriage as a sin. Some know they would be punished or beaten or even thrown out of the house if they admitted to having sex. Some simply don’t want to disappoint their parents and are afraid to speak to them.
Does Obama really want young girls like these to be denied access to the morning after pill and then to find themselves pregnant at age 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, or 17? Would he rather these girls have abortions, or would he prefer they become mothers? Does he expect them to put their children up for adoption without regret? Or does he want them to have to struggle to complete their education so they can support children?
Mr. President, you may not know your own daughters as well as you think you do. Let’s hope they will never need the morning after pill. Let’s hope that if they do, they will come to you. But, Mr. President, can you please consider that not all girls are your daughters?
Mr. President, women and girls are people just like you. We come in all shapes and sizes and from different families and circumstances.
Mr. President, you have admitted that you made mistakes as a teen-ager. If you had been a girl, wouldn’t you have wanted unrestricted access to the morning after pill?
Mr. President, it is high time you started thinking of women and girls not as “your” wife, “your” daughter, or “your” mother—but as persons. As a person in her own right, every woman and every girl should have the right to a pill that prevents an unwanted pregnancy in her body. Judge Korman understood that. Why can’t you?
Update May 10: A federal judge on Friday denied the Obama administration’s request to delay his order that the Plan B morning-after pill be made available over the counter without age limits. The judge sharply rebuked the administration for appealing his decision, calling the move politically motivated, “frivolous,” and “something out of an alternate reality.” … Following Friday’s ruling, the government has until noon Monday, May 13, to file a stay motion with the 2nd Circuit to delay compliance pending its appeal, or it will be forced to lift the age limit on the pill.
Mr. President, please let the judge’s decision stand. If you really care about girls, make a realistic, reasonable, and rational decision–not an emotional one based on what you want for your daughters!
Update May 13: (Sadly) the government has filed a last-second appeal that will delay the sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill to girls of any age without a prescription.
Carol P. Christ is grateful that she was given an experimental version of the morning after pill by the Yale University health service without having to ask permission from her parents. She leads life-transforming Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete through Ariadne Institute. Carol spoke on a WATER Teleconference recently. Her books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely-used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions.
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Carol, thanks you for this strong and relevant piece! Women and young women and girls are indeed people in their own rights and your advocacy on their behalf to the president is a most caring feminist act.
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I hope the president will read this post and hear your voice–and voice of every woman who is crying out to be heard.
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I view the President as suffering from a massive failure of empathy.
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I was one of those girls who got pregnant at 17 and was afraid to tell my parents. They would not have beaten me or thrown me out, but still I didn’t want to tell them. So, instead, I found my way to Tijuana and an illegal abortion (this was 1962). I was one of the lucky ones who survived the ordeal. Yes, President Obama, please let the judge’s order stand and allow us to determine what we do with our bodies. Thank you Carol for your voice.
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This decision could force girls to turn to illegal abortions–in states where legal abortions are not available to them — if they can’t get the pill. Thanks for reminding us what this means, Micki.
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The Morning After Pill actually “makes” the teen girl who raped her the property of the boy or man who raped and impregnated her. Doesn’t it occur to any “judge” or even Mr Obama that there is such a thing as statutory rape, or are we now “re-imagining” this heinous act? ALL girls who have been impregnated who are below a certain age have been statutorily raped. Rapists rely on lies after the fact to cover up the act. The Morning After Pill, and all who advocate its use have of course always lied to themselves about the fact that children can be impregnated before they are capable of imagining what motherhood really is. Women who deny the teenage girl her right not to be raped, and focus instead on the lies that the Morning After Pill has introduced into our culture are guilty of acting like misogynists.
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Thank you, Carol. I was shocked by Obama’s stance on this. No woman should have a child she doesn’t want or cannot care for. Why is this so hard for people to understand?
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A solid criticism of the President and a great show of understanding about the issue.
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Hi, Carol,
I sent a simular letter to the editor of Ms. Magazine.
Thousands of Mothers who received Battered Justice in the Courtroom and the loss of their children by sudden exparte legal actions promoted by the males liberation proponets and who reported mental-emotional-phyiscal and sexual abuse demonstrated in front of the White House and lobbyied Congress and then held a weekend Battered Mothers Conference to empower each other to keep fighting the all most useless fight to regain custody of their children or to have them removed from the abuser was basically ignored…..I actually hounded the Washington Press to cover and the News Stations…..finally the Washington Press ran an article. So, what does this say? Women are important and their abused children? Just more Sin By Silence.
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What a timely article. After being bombarded yesterday with mother’s day propaganda all over the internet, I got sick of all the male platitudes about OUR mothers, OUR daughters etc.
I am blunt, I think mother’s day is a sop from patriarchy, and I think that any man who uses the word MY or OUR in reference to women should…. (fill in an appropriate blank here). Women are not the property of men, the morning after pill has nothing to do with fathers, and everything to do with girls and women having access. Girls are raped every day, they are presured into sex everyday, and men should have no control whatsoever over whether women and girls keep a child or not. Men risk nothing in sex, but women risk everything by being pregnant.
So no Mr. President, you don’t get to rule on Plan B, you can just shut your mouth and stop using women to be apendages to men.
And for the record, I think having children is an act of complete insanity in this overpopulated world, and we need to shrink the global population. We might even consider drastically limiting the male population since it is so prone to violence. Reform isn’t working and isn’t going to work. Motherhood is the shill to get women to believe that women actually have choice over this in most parts of the world. Well, no, women are viewed as breeders by men; that is how men see women. Plan B = No male decision makers allowed
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Thanks, Carol, for this passionate and informative post. It points out again why “matriarchy” (a matristic, matrifocal culture) would be better for us women. In a developed country that was also a matriarchy, birth control would be available for every sexually active woman, no matter her age, since she and her matriline would be responsible for any children she had.
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So true Nancy. In a matriarchy no girl would be on her own with a child and no young boy would be expected to support a wife and child on his own. Siggghhhhhhhhhh
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Thanks for the responses. Yesterday I felt angry. Today I feel sad for girls who need the pill.
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Thank you Carol for your wonderful blog post. This hits me in a very personal space. When I lost my virginity at 16 it was not by choice. It was as you have a written a date that “had gone to far.” The weeks that followed when I prayed that I wasn’t pregnant were horrific. I ended up staying with the man I lost my virginity to. At the time I thought this was the best choice because if i was going to be pregnant I needed someone to be there with me. As awful as the prospect of staying with him was the thought of talking to my nonexistant mother was worse. I pray that other young girls will not have to have the same experience that I did. If plan b had been an option I would have been saved the indignity of staying with that man. I would have been able to tell him that what he did was wrong. I would have been saved the year of physcial and emotional abuse I suffered from him.
Girls need options. We cannot pretend that all girls have this ideal homelife where their families are available and understanding. The reality is that many girls need a safe option that isn’t going to judge them. I hope that president allows plan b to be that option.
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Thank you, Carol, for such a lucid expression of relevant outrage. I hope you will send this piece directly to the president. He would benefit from reading it.
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Carol,
I agree with you on many of these points. However, I must tell you that in the community in which I work which is a largely African-American and Latina community, many conscientious parents would support President Obama’s proposal. There are parents in these communities who are working very hard to keep their families together against tremendous odds and they would feel that this would undermine their ability as fathers and especially as mothers , to parent their children. I would guarantee that the majority of the opposition would come from the mothers in this case.
I say this to try to bridge what is all too often a cultural divide. I do not know that Obama’s decision is only about his seeing women only in relation to men. I would bet that Michelle would strongly agree with his decision.
Lastly, as a doctor, I am concerned about the “safety” of unmonitored use of these medications. We have learned that even unmonitored use if Tylenol can be dangerous.
I am saying that we do have to outweigh risks vs benefits and as a Latina woman and a health professional, this is not a simple decision.
I am writing because I have tremendous respect for your work and always find it thoughtful and courageous. I am responding in kind.
Thank you.
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Dear Sonia,
Thank you for your thoughtful and courageous response. Issues of race and culture are important, and I appreciate your sharing from the perspective of the communities you know and speak of. I actually had young women of color in mind as well as young white women when I was writing, but I don’t live in your community, and I am not a doctor.
I agree with the parents you give voice to that in general having sex at a young age is not a good idea for girls–especially in situations of male dominance where girls with low self-esteem (because of racism and sexism) may have sex to please boys, not because they actually want it. You are right that these are complex issues.
I agree with you that President Obama may have been listening to Michelle and thinking about all of the vulnerabilities of girls of color when he made this decision.
I guess I think that not having access to contraception will not stop girls from having sex, including sex at too young an age and with the wrong boy–even though parents may hope otherwise.
If my 12 or 13 year old daughter was having sex, I do not think I would be happy about it. But I also would hope with all my heart that she would not get pregnant.
Just yesterday I was mulling on the fact that condoms are available without regard to age.
Thanks for being willing to enter into dialogue. This is so important for all of us. We need to speak with each other and to hear each other and to be aware of our different perspectives and experiences.
Hope we will continue the dialogue.
Carol
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Dear Carol,
I do appreciate your thoughtful response and your willingness to enter into dialogue.
I think the issue is not only about stopping girls from having sex before they themselves are really able to make a choice for themselves. I think the issue is also a deeper issue around that fact that communities of color have often felt that their children belong to the state more than they belong to their mothers and fathers. There is so much historical baggage here- slavery, taking Native American children away from their parents, etc.
I work in chemical dependence and I see how erratic and sometimes without rhyme or reason, children are taken away from their parents and put into foster care. Sometimes children do need to be taken from families that are destructive to them. However, the racism and cultural bias as well as the lack of training of the workers in the child protection agencies is really beyond belief.
So I think that there is first this idea that these mothers and fathers already feel that they are not supported to be good enough parents. There are very little resources for this in our communities. There is the sense that my child can be taken from me at the whim of people who do not understand us.Then there is this sense that ” I need to know what is going on with my child.” This is valid and yet again very few skills are taught to parents to be able to really communicate with their children. These are parents who often had parents who could not do this either.
To have a child be able to take the morning after pills means the child may not ever tell the parents what is going on. In addition, I would add that if the child is being abused sexually, the abuser may very well coerce the young girls to take the pill so that she doesn’t become pregnant and so the abuse will continue and not be discovered.
Clearly I am not saying that the young girl becoming pregnant is a better idea. It is just not so simple, in my mind.
If you add on to this the Tuskegee experiments and the fact that probably the majority of girls taking the medication will be young women of color,there is a lot of mistrust in our communities for these kinds of interventions. In truth we do not know the impact on young women’s bodies that repeated use of these pills will have. The medical community is not well known for forecasting the effect of medications over time that affect the hormones of a growing young woman (or older women for that matter). If the alternative is repeated pregnancies, this would be the lesser of two evils but taking medications is seldom without some unforeseen consequences.
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Also, as a health care provider, I would really like to see some kind of counseling, safe sex education (these pills will not prevent HIV or other STD’s), birth control information, given with these medications. I have to add that also as a doctor, I have a very difficult time explaining to Latina mothers, for example, that I want to talk to their 12 or 13, or 14 or 15 yo child alone. I do this to discuss issues regarding sexuality. Even my educated colleagues who are Latinas have a very difficult time with this issue as culturally it is somewhat disrespectful to the parent. A lot of education has to happen in these instances.
Lastly, I have to tell you that I understand what you say about the danger of President Obama feeling he owns his daughters but in view of the history of fathers disowning their children in these communities, again this takes on a different light.
I do not mean to say that it’s ok for men of color to feel their daughters are their property. That is of course a terrible problem. However, to have a father really concerned about his daughters in the way President Obama is has often brought tears to my eyes.
My father never really claimed me as his daughter in any significant way, although he did acknowledge that I existed in the birth certificate and on birthday cards. I know that that too can be an expression of ownership ( or not) but to see a man of color really caring about what is going on with his daughters is a delightful sight for many of us.
This is lengthy and a bit rambling but these are issues close to my heart and I am grateful for this opportunity to dialogue.
Thank you.
Sonia.
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Thank you for making explicit the link between the possessive language used around women, and the ease with which our bodies become the property of the state.
Is anyone else in love with the judge who told it like it is, calling the President’s actions frivolous and political hokey-pokey?
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Thanks for your second response too Sonia. I am listening.
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Update:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/10/obama-plan-b-decision-fed_n_3418359.html
Obama decides not to continue to appeal the case.
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FDA lifts restrictions on Plan B. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/fda-morning-after-pill_n_3475178.html
FDA has not lifted age limits on competing generics.
Hopefully this is not another ploy to keep the morning after pill out of the hands of girls who need it.
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