[Sex Ed] I just finished a telephone interview with Melissa (Missy) Larsen, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Council for Utah.PPAC is the political action committee for Planned Parenthood. It has the legal status to lobby and raise funds for pro-choice and family planning education. So whenever you hear or read about a small but determined cadre of activists at the Utah Legislature trying to keep the Capitol Hill braintrust from turning back abortion rights to the Flintstone era, it's pretty much PPAC doing heavy lifting.
Fun facts about Utah's lack of smarts in preventing pregnancy, via Larsen:
1. Utah's Planned Parenthood clinics have the highest distribution rate of all PP clinics in the country of Plan B contraception, aka "the morning-after" pill. You know how this works, right? You think you might be pregnant from sex the night before and you don't want to be. You get a prescription for Plan B. You have to take it before 72 hours are up--after that it's useless.
2. The highest numbers of Plan B prescriptions in Utah come out of the Orem Planned Parenthood clinic in Utah County.
3. Why? Because in Utah, where we refuse to talk openly or educate kids in school about what makes babies and how to prevent having them, men and women are doing it just as often as in any other state. It's just that, according to Larsen, the women who come to the clinics "think the planets are alligned or the moon is right and I won't get pregnant if I do it just this once."Then they visit the clinic for a dose of morning-after magic and "swear they will never do it again."
4. They do it again, of course. And again. They keep coming back for Plan B,which makes you nauseous and carries a much higher risk of not working than the good ol' birth control pill ever did. Says Larsen, with a sigh: "They don't want to use contraceptives routinely because that would mean they are actually thinking about sex and planning for it. And good girls don't do that." (Holly Mullen)
