Your child cannot take an aspirin at school without written permission from you, but if you have a teenage daughter age 15 or older, she can now purchase a morning after pill without your knowledge or approval. This pill can triple the risk of a life threatening ectopic pregnancy, as well as cause heart attacks, blood clots, and strokes. It is a Group I carcinogen as rated by the World Health Organization. The claim that this pill will not affect a woman who is already pregnant, or harm a developing fetus, is disputed by none other than Dr. James Trussell, Director of Princeton’s Office of Population Research. He is one of the world’s top authorities on the morning after pill, even though he is a member of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s national medical committee, and a board member of the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation.

“To make an informed choice, women must know that [emergency contraceptive pills] … prevent pregnancy primarily by delaying or inhibiting ovulation and inhibiting fertilization, but may at times inhibit implantation of a fertilized egg in the endometrium,” he writes with Dr. Elizabeth G. Raymond who co-authored an academic review on the drug dated February 2013.

The government has forcibly stepped between your rights as a parent to care for your child, to be responsible for your child, her welfare and decisions. With this ruling, you now have young girls who do not even have a driver’s license able to walk into a drug store and purchase a drug that could have grave repercussions for her, mentally and physically. In England studies have shown the STD rates increasing since EC became widely available. [Paton, David, Family Planning, Teenage Pregnancy, and STIs.” Nov. 2003].

This pill contains 40 times the dosage in a birth control pill. If this is safe, then why must a woman have a prescription for birth control pills? With this decision, a young vulnerable girl, facing a decision, a reality with life altering, life threatening implications, will now be in the position of making that terrible decision without the wisdom, counsel and love of her parents, and will not even have the medical knowledge of a doctor to rely on. In addition, this decision places young girls who are the at highest risk of sexual abuse and contracting STDs outside the medical community where they might receive care and intervention.

This is a bad decision on the part of the FDA, but as usual when politics are involved, particularly the “pro choice” politics of the Obama administration, it will be the weakest among us who pay the price for this. Scared young girls who need wisdom and guidance more than they ever will in their life will risk their very lives because they have heard from a friend who heard from a friend that this is the easiest thing to do. Yeah, this is going to work well. Not.