Women, raise your hands if you would keep going to an obstetrician-gynecologist who prescribed “prayer” and specific “Scripture readings” for your pre-menstrual syndrome symptoms.
If you believe prayer will eradicate your menstrual cramps, then perhaps it would be best if you stop reading right now. If not, take note, because it’s come out that President George W. Bush is planning to appoint a doctor who refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women as head of the Federal Drug Administration’s panel on women’s health policy.
Karen Tumulty of TIME magazine wrote that Bush wants W. David Hager to be chairman of the 11-member Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee, where he will “lead its study of hormone-replacement therapy for menopausal women, one of the biggest controversies in health care.”
What are Hager’s qualifications to head this committee? Well, he’s written a book titled As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now and he’s supposedly a University of Kentucky professor. Tumulty disputes that claim, however, and wrote that a university official said that Hager’s appointment is part-time, voluntary and involves working with interns at Lexington’s Central Baptist Hospital, not the university itself. Interesting.
Tumulty goes on to write that, “FDA advisory panels often have near-final say over crucial health care questions.” Beyond worrisome, this could mean any number of things for women. Birth control pills could come up as something to be eliminated and the RU-486 abortion pill could become an even bigger issue. Basically, it could mean big changes for all women in the country.
Honestly, religion and medical science sponsored by the federal government should be wholly separate. This is the ideal, however, and one would be naive to think this could actually happen. Still, women have rights that they fought long and hard for and to have them jeopardized by somebody who is so obviously biased is frightening.
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During a time when Roe v. Wade is under fire with a conservative White House and Congress, for women to have their right to birth control threatened as well is disheartening and disturbing. Women should not stand silent during these changes as we might find ourselves fighting once again to retain our basic rights.
Our mothers stood in picket lines to give us our right to do many things, such as play sports, have the right to choose to have a baby and learn about birth control in public schools. Don’t let our mothers’ hard work go to waste. Stand up and say something.
Let’s make our mothers proud of their daughters. Let your voices be heard about this and many other issues that are threatening our rights today.
Angela Williams
Editor in Chief
