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There doesn’t got to be a morning after

This morning I heard a story on the radio about the HHS secretary nixing the recommendation of her scientific panel that Plan B, the emergency contraception pill, be made available over the counter to people of all ages. Boy, I can’t imagine why anybody would object to 12 year olds being able to buy on […]

This morning I heard a story on the radio about the HHS secretary nixing the recommendation of her scientific panel that Plan B, the emergency contraception pill, be made available over the counter to people of all ages. Boy, I can’t imagine why anybody would object to 12 year olds being able to buy on her on, like it was a pack of Life Savers, a dose of hormones that will keep her from getting pregnant after sex.

Don’t believe it when people say Plan B isn’t abortifacient. According to the manufacturer, one way (but not the only way) it works is to prevent implantation of the fertilized egg. For people who believe life begins at conception, this is abortion.

There was on the radio this morning the usual rigamarole about how the secretary’s decision reflected a preference for “politics” over “science.” These are almost always stupid complaints. Of course it’s a political decision! So what? “Science” only offers an opinion about whether this pill is or isn’t safe for kids to take. It doesn’t offer an opinion about whether or not it’s a good idea to make it available to them. That is a moral decision, which means, inevitably, a political one. Again: so what? Had the decision gone the other way, it would also have been a political decision. Again: so what?

It’s a source of frequent irritation the way we cannot get straight in our heads the difference between science and morality in these discussions. This is not the fault of science, but of politicized people who wish to use the authority of science to justify political or moral agendas. When Darwin published his work, you have imperialists in the UK claiming that science justified British imperialism (survival of the fittest applied to geopolitics), you had abolitionists claiming that science backed the anti-slavery movement (because we are all brothers under the skin), and you had eugenicists seizing the mantle of science to support theories of racial superiority.

I’m not saying that science never indicates which course of action would be the best one to take in a given situation. But I am saying that this is not one of those situations, and it happens a lot less often than is claimed.

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