The F.D.A. will soon make available a "morning after" pill to be sold over-the-counter to those 17 years of age or older. In its article, The New York Times reports that, "The agency’s decision came after Judge Edward R. Korman of Federal District Court in New York ruled last month in a highly unusual case that the agency’s decision to limit easy access to Plan B to those 18 and older was driven by politics, not science. He gave the agency 30 days to lower the age limit to 17."
We see here, as in the stem-cell debate, a manipulated one-way use of the politics/science pairing.
Bush used politics to form policies.
Obama uses science to form policies.
Who wants science to determine policies? I want a politician who serves the polis to form policies. Science serves the decision, it shouldn't determine it. Science can determine whether a "morning after" pill successfully chemically aborts or prevents implantation of the fertilized embryo, but that is where science's voice ends. It can't form policy.
Politicians who serve the polis take the scientific data and form policies. The Bush administration didn't "ignore science" and think only of "politics" (as if that's a four letter dirty word), instead the admininstration took into account the moral implications and from that made a decision. Obama's administration is doing nothing different. It's not about a politics/science word game, it's about one group making decisions based on one set of values and another administration doing precisely the same thing but with a whole other set of values.
This false "politics/science" pairing doesn't help the debate, because at its heart it doesn't mean anything. Same dynamic is/was occuring in the stem-cell debate.
In 2000 the Vatican made a statement regarding the "morning after" pill.
And yesterday, the USCCB made a statement as well.
God help us.
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