President Obama

Obama Speaks Up for Net Neutrality

Obama Contradicts FCC Chief on Fast Lanes, Net Neutrality Backers Say

Net neutrality is the idea that the Internet should be an open platform, and broadband companies shouldn’t be able to interfere with your right to access content and services on line. — Sam Gustin for motherboard.vice.com

President Obama made a strong and clear declaration supporting net neutrality during his remarks on Tuesday to the US-Africa Business Forum since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced plans to make new rules governing the Internet.

“I personally, the position of my administration, as well as a lot of the companies here, is that you don’t want to start getting a differentiation in how accessible the Internet is to different users,” Obama added. “You want to leave it open so the next Google and the next Facebook can succeed.”

Free Press Flickr/creative commons

Free Press
Flickr/creative commons

Besides allowing for innovation by maintaining net neutrality, any restrictions on free access to the Internet will make it more difficult for organizations and others to be heard, essentially destroying the inherent democracy intended in the first place.

Instead of treating it like any other utility as it should, the FCC is seriously entertaining a proposal to allow certain big corporations such as Verizon and Comcast to pay more for broader and faster access, costs which consumers will ultimately bear, and overpowering the service that others get.

The period for public comments, variously estimated to be 677,000 to more than one million, ended in mid-July, and the FCC has promised to read and consider each one. These comments are now available to analysts, journalists, and consumers, and early reports have them running 99 to 1 in favor of no special interest regulations.

But because monied corporate power seems to have no bounds these days, we have keep paying attention to this issue until the FCC formally rejects the very notion of these pay-to-play regulations.

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Preventing Teens from Preventing Pregnancy: “Plan B” not an Option for Teens PART II

“As many as 11% of U.S. women ages 15-44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used a “morning after” pill at least once, or 5.8 million women. Half say they used it because they feared their birth control method may have failed, and the rest say they had unprotected sex.”

First Federal Report on Emergency Contraception

The report also found that only 14% of sexually experienced females ages 15–19 had ever used emergency contraception, compared to 23% of women ages 20-24 and 16% of women ages 25–29. Moreover, the report showed that emergency contraception was most common among women 20-24, the never married, Hispanic and white women, and the college-educated.

So what’s with this fear that if the morning-after pill was available over-the-counter for girls under the age of 17 without prescription, that there would be a flood of 10 and 11 year olds buying it along with “bubble gum or batteries?” In my opinion, if they are old enough to have sex and have babies, they are old enough to have access to reproductive services, contraception, and especially the information provided by comprehensive sex education that is necessary for them to make healthy, responsible decisions about their sexuality and behaviors.

Federal Judge Edward R. Korman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York seems to agree with me. In April (2013), Korman’s ruling in Tummino v. Hamburg reversed a prior decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS). In 1999, Plan B became the first emergency contraceptive approved for use by prescription. In 2006, the FDA approved it as an over-the counter drug for women over the age of 18, while requiring a prescription for minors and subsequently allowed 17-year-olds to obtain the drug without a prescription, which was overturned by the HSS in 2011 (see previous article).

Magazine cover depicting headlines for MTV’s “Teen Mom” series, demonstrating how American society exploits the struggles of teen mothers for humor and profit. The media should be trying to reinforce teen’s sexual and reproductive rights, including access to reproductive services and comprehensive sex education, not mocking the experiences of teen mothers in a sitcom reality television show.

Many have argued that the controversy over emergency contraception is based in politics, not science, where it should be. Nonetheless, this ruling has sparked hope in many, including Nancy Northup, the president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit against the FDA and HSS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: “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. Women all over the country will no longer face arbitrary delays and barriers just to get emergency contraception.”

Now we who support the sexual rights of youth and access to comprehensive reproductive services must wait to see what unfolds next, as the Justice Department reacted to the ruling by stating, “The Department of Justice is reviewing the appellate options and expects to act promptly,” according to spokeswoman Allison Price.

For more, see Part 1.

Creative Commons Image Provided by: Flickr

Preventing Teens from Preventing Pregnancy: “Plan B” not an Option for Teens PART I

In 2011, the secretary of health and human services’ banned over-the-counter sales of emergency birth control to girls under age 17… in 2013, a federal judge challenged this decision.

When Kathleen Sebelius, former health secretary of President Obama, blocked the sale of emergency birth control (commonly referred as the “morning after pill” or by its name bran of “Plan B”) to girls under the age of 17, President Obama endorsed her decision, saying that “the reason Kathleen made this decision was she could not be confident that a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old going into a drugstore should be able – along with bubble gum or batteries – be able to buy a medication that potentially, if not used properly, could end up having an adverse effect.”

However, not everyone believes that Plan B will produce “adverse effects” on young girls.

Ted Miller, spokesman for Naral Pro-Choice America, and others in women’s groups argued that science supported the use of such medication for young girls: “Teva, the pill’s maker, commissioned two large studies in adolescents to satisfy government concerns about selling freely to them.” This did not satisfy Ms. Sebelius, who said in her reject that neither study included 11-year-olds. Even so, according to Dr. Phillip Stubblefield, a contraceptive expert from Boston University School of Medicine, there is no reason to believe that the morning-after pill would react any differently than older girls.

A huge part of the controversy of emergency contraception is that it is commonly confused with the abortion pill, when in fact, emergency contraception only prevents pregnancy, not terminates it.

 

But you tell me, what would you rather have: a pregnant 10 or 11-year-old, or a 10 or 11-year-old buying Plan B?

Research has demonstrated how teen pregnancy and childbearing negatively affects the parents and society, including substantial social and economic costs. In 2008, teen pregnancy and childbirth accounted for nearly $11 billion per year in costs to U.S. taxpayers for increased health care and foster care, increased incarceration rates among children of teen parents, and lost tax revenue because of lower educational attainment and income among teen mothers. Moreover, only about 50% of teen mothers receive a high school diploma by 22 years of age, versus approximately 90% of women who had not given birth during adolescence.

Life isn’t easy for the children of teen parents either: compared to children born to older mothers, children born to teen moms are likely to drop out of high school, live in poverty, become teen parents, use Medicaid and CHIP, experience abuse/neglect, enter the foster care system, end up in prisons, and be raised in single parent families. Unfortunately as well, the children of teenage mothers are more likely to have more health problems and face unemployment as a young adult. Additionally, these children have lower scores on measures of kindergarten readiness and lower vocabulary, math, and reading scores. In 2011 alone, almost 330,000 babies were born to teen girls between the ages of 15 and 19.

To clarify, Plan B is an emergency contraception to be taken within 72 hours after unprotected intercourse to prevent pregnancy. Plan B is NOT to be confused with RU-486, the abortion drug. So if you ask me, I’d rather have emergency birth control available to teens who desperately need it than more disadvantaged teen parents and children. And apparently, so does a federal judge. Check out Part 2 for the rest of this article.

Creative Commons Image Provided by: Shannon Kringen
Edited by: Alifa Watkins