Let’s Talk Babies

No, this is not an article about abortion — although I find most angles on that debate to be ridiculously fallacious. The babies I am referring to are the 11 year old girls that are currently prevented access to emergency contraception without parental consent, some of whom are therefore being coerced into either having an abortion, or having a baby themselves. Both of these prospects are and should be absolutely and unequivocally abhorrent to any parent considering them. Yet, reality continues to defy common sense. So what’s up?

The Facts

It’s Safe.

The Washington Post reports that Plan B is far safer than many medications that can currently be obtained over the counter, such as Tylenol or Aspirin. Judge Korman said in his ruling last month, “These emergency contraceptives would be among the safest drugs sold over the counter.”

Price for one dose: 50$.

Just because 11 year old girls might be legally allowed to purchase Plan B does not mean that they actually could purchase it. The price tag would serve as a deterrent for most of the few 11 year old girls who do get to that point from every having unprotected sex again.

This debate is not about 11 year old girls having sex.

Major news flash. Some people have sex. It is reality. Everyone can blab about abstinence until they go horse and lose their voices, and there will still be people having sex that society does not approve of.

Another news flash. Some people are unreasonable. Some people will try to make their eleven year old kid keep and raise a baby as a punishment for having sex. This is unfair to the baby. Nobody deserves to be their mother’s punishment. And nobody deserves to be forced to live a life of poverty and despondency because of someone else’s mistake.

History of the Debate

July 28th, 1999: Plan B approved by FDA for prescription-only use.

2003: FDA application filed to make Plan B available over the counter.

August 24th, 2006: Plan B approved for non-prescription sale to women age 18 and up. Women under the age of 18 still needed a prescription.

March 23rd, 2009: A US judge ordered the FDA to allow 17 year olds to acquire Plan B without a prescription. Both men and women could now acquire Plan B.

December 7th, 2011: FDA decision to make Plan B available without a prescription to anyone is vetoed by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. FDA Administrator Margaret A. Hamburg said in a statement, “There is adequate and reasonable, well-supported, and science-based evidence that Plan B One-Step is safe and effective and should be approved for nonprescription use for all females of child-bearing potential… However, this morning I received a memorandum from the Secretary of Health and Human Services invoking her authority under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to execute its provisions and stating that she does not agree with the Agency’s decision.”

April 5th, 2013: U.S. District Judge Edward Korman on ordered the FDA to lift age restrictions on all levonorgestrel-based emergency contraception. He stated, “These emergency contraceptives would be among the safest drugs sold over the counter… The only documented adverse effects of a $50 dose of levonorgestrel are nausea and delay of menses by several days. Any objective review makes it clear that Plan B is more dangerous to politicians than to adolescent girls.”

May 1st, 2013: FDA approves Plan B for non-prescription use for women age 15 and over (with photo id) one day before filing appeal of the April 5th decision. Judge Korman called the decision a “lot of nonsense” because 15 year old girls would be unlikely to have access to photo identification, and told one of the FDA’s lawyers, “I’m convinced the only reason you decided it when it was decided was to sugarcoat this appeal.” He noted that the FDA’s decision would not apply to other forms of emergency contraception.

 Conclusion

If you have read and comprehended this article in its entirety, and you still think that it is a good idea to deny emergency contraception to anyone, then please immediately unfriend me on Facebook and never come near my children.

Why the Labor Force Participation Rate is Irrelevant

As great economic report after great economic report drown our news sources, there has always been a tiny Republican whisper in the back of our heads saying that the unemployment rate is meaningless if it doesn’t account for all the people who stopped looking for work. They point to the Labor Force Participation Rate, which is at its lowest level since 1979, and make oblique references to the “real” unemployment rate. So let’s take a look at this figure. Here is a chart from 2006 to 2013 that I acquired from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

In fact, it does seem stable until the recession hits. Then it does indeed plummet to the lowest level since 1979, and shows no signs of letting up any time soon. So I guess the Republicans are right, and this article is over. Too bad economy, so sad. You will never recover from your 36.7% “real” unemployment rate.

Oh wait. I forgot how terrible that would be as the ending of an article. Perhaps we should take a closer look, just for the sake of the preservation of my oh so glorious reputation. 

Here we see the truth. The long term trends in this statistic do not follow any kind of logical correlation to the health of our economy. I don’t know about you, but I see no indication of the 1970’s recession, or the 1980’s recession, or any of the other recessions that show up on this chart of long-term unemployment rates:

In fact, I only see two trends. Rising for fifty years between 1948 and 1998, and decline from 1998 on. The worst recession since the great depression occurred during the seventies and eighties, and that is the time when this statistic is in the middle of a steroid-spawned growth spurt. You seriously need a microscope to find any kind of economic correlation whatsoever!

Ok. So if we aren’t measuring the economy here, what exactly are we measuring? Well, quite simply, we are measuring the percentage of the population that is actively participating in the labor force. Back in the 1940’s, there was this thing called World War Two, where about 2 million young men left the country and died and had no kids. Then they all came home at once and started breeding like rodents with the millions of foreign wives that they brought back into the country. There was a period in our nations history when many of the would-be old retired people had died in a horrible war, and the “baby-boomers” started coming of age and joining the labor force. In 1973, Roe v. Wade made abortions legal, and the number of kids being born started to shrink. In about 2000, the baby-boomers started to retire, the “aborted generation” started coming of age, and medical advances make the baby-boomers artificially bloated. Thus we see a rapid increase in old retired people, and a steady decrease in the number of working aged people. Heck, if it weren’t for all the immigrants streaming across the border to join our workforce, we’d be in serious trouble!

There is one final issue that needs to be addressed. The recession. After all, isn’t it true that during a recession, some people drop out of the labor force and stop actively looking for a job even though they really secretly want one? Yes. It is true. But what is really going on here? Are these people who are starving, or homeless, and desperately in need of a job? I am a little skeptical of that notion, otherwise I think most of them would at least be applying. The majority, I suspect, are individuals who decided to go back to school to get a higher education so that they won’t be the first to get laid off next time. Think about it. You get laid off from your job, and the economy is crap, why not get an education when you haven’t got anything better to do anyways? These people are obviously supporting themselves  somehow, even if it is a job at McDonald’s or student loans. And in the long run, having a more educated workforce will be to both our economic advantage and the economic advantage of those who bothered to increase their personal capital.

So the main drivers of this trend are a combination of demographic variables that are kind of not in Obama’s jurisdiction, and people who decided to get an education and make our country stronger in the future. Think about it. A four-year degree takes four years. We should therefore see a four year delay between actual economic recovery and  the recovery of the labor participation rate. Remember that long-term graph that we were looking at earlier? The pre-baby boomer norm was around 59%. Perhaps we still have a ways to drop.