Op-ed: Women Today, Gays Tomorrow? 

When politicians play politics with women’s bodies, women
always lose. And when women lose, the fallout hits LGBT people as well. 

While Republican presidential candidates have been fighting
over who is most conservative throughout the January primaries, LGBT people
seem to have missed the sucker punch President Obama delivered just before
Christmas where he showed his own conservative stripes for purely political
reasons.

In December, after thorough review, the Food and Drug Administration approved
expanding the use of the contraceptive Plan B to women under 18. Plan B is not
an abortifacient like RU-486; there is no risk of bleeding. Plan B is a high
dosage of the same compound found in birth control pills. It works to prevent
fertilization.

It’s safe and should be accessible to every woman of
childbearing age and ability. It is the best preventative to pregnancy and abortion
available, excepting regular use of contraceptives.

When the FDA said yes, however, Obama said no in a move that
was pro-politics and antiscience. His reasoning? He didn’t want his own
daughters finding Plan B “alongside bubble gum or batteries” in the local
drugstore. 

President Obama campaigned on being pro-science — understanding
global warming, stem cell research, and the like. But just as he undermined the Environmental Protection Agency’s
clean air ruling last September, he undermined the FDA — and women — right
before Christmas. It was the kind of antiscience move one expects from
far-right Tea Party extremists, not from a Democratic president.

The importance of the FDA ruling cannot be overstated, which
is why Obama overriding that ruling is so troubling. The majority of first
trimester abortions in the U.S. — as well as the majority of the third
trimester abortions in the U.S. — are performed on women between the ages
of 12 and 24. Plan B doesn’t just prevent pregnancy, it prevents abortion. It
gives women who were either forced to have sex or who had unplanned sex an
immediate option to not get pregnant.

Why would Obama take away that option? When he cites his own
daughters, Malia, 13, and Sasha, 10, he’s not looking at the actual demographic
for teen pregnancy. Most young women who get pregnant early are not in two-parent, one percenter households.

The Plan B debate faded from political discourse as suddenly
as it arose. But for women and gay men, who have much at stake in having
control over their own bodies, the issue cannot be ignored. It’s not just
teenage girls who might get pregnant who are affected by Obama’s right-wing,
antiscience decision. It’s also LGBT people who want control over their own
bodies with regard to health issues from HIV/AIDS to gender reassignment.

If Obama can dismiss the
FDA’s findings on something as safe as Plan B predicated on his personal or
political whims, then what is to prevent him from doing the same with something
less obviously safe, like hormone treatments for transgender youth or HIV
cocktails for teenagers? Once politics posing as morality becomes a litmus test for
science, the slippery slope is already before us.

When the president rules against science, we all lose. And
once ground is lost in battles that refer back to the so-called culture wars
like women’s rights and LGBT rights, there’s no regaining it.

Plan B is safer than aspirin and Tylenol, both readily
available to girls 12 and older every day. Plan B is as safe as condoms, which
are available in every supermarket and drugstore now. (Obama didn’t mention
them being near the bubble gum and batteries.)  

Obama ignored not just the FDA, but the Democratic
commitment to choose facts over feelings. It was a move that bodes ill for
women and queers as the election cycle heats up: Plan B today, who knows what
tomorrow.

 

 
VICTORIA A. BROWNWORTH is an award-winning journalist and the author and editor
of nearly 30 books. Her most recent book, From Where We Sit: Black
Writers Write Black Youth has been nominated for the Coretta Scott King
Award, the Foreword Book of the Year Award, and the Lambda Literary Award for
2012. Follow her on Twitter @VABVOX
and check her political blog http://www.victoriabrownworth.com.