Should the Plan B pill be dispensed as easily as a bag of potato chips?

Are we encouraging our youth to sleep around? Are we forcing this generation to promiscuity and teenage pregnancy?

This is the over dramatization that is flooding headlines and broadcasts.

The media is sensationalizing Shippensburg University’s decision to give students easy access to a back-up contraceptive.

According to Shippensburg University, all of the students currently enrolled are at least 17, which is the minimum age to receive the pill.

So what is the big deal if they can go to Etter Health Center and pay $25 to get it?

Students are not all going to practice safe sex, let alone abstinence.

Why attempt to keep methods of sexual health a secret from them?

“Sex sells.”

We all hear it and we are all living it. The media is fueling a sex-focused generation and depleting from true relationship.

Shows like “Sixteen and Pregnant” or “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” depict a teenage world in which abstinence does not exist or is little tolerated. Movies make sex a casual and fleeting venture.

So why is it, that if as a society we are so accepting of the accessibility of sex to our youth, we are so opposed to the accessibility of contraception?
The media is attempting to make it an issue of morality, but no student or state funds are being used to supply the pill, nor is the university making a profit by selling it.

The media then tries to make it a legal issue, but again the students are of age and must be checked in at the front desk.

The pill is not available to non-students and cannot be accessed when Etter is closed.

So now the media is going after the method of dispensing the pill, a medical supplies vending machine. The point of vending Plan B is to give students a private way to get the pill, which should be a private decision.

Sex is not a new phenomenon among our generation and is more accessible today than it has ever been in the past.

So, are we encouraging youth to sleep around by providing them instant and private access to the Plan B contraceptive?

Etter also provides free condoms as does the Women’s Center on campus.

PMI in town conducts free gonorrhea and chlamydia testing and provides free treatment. Does having these options condone promiscuity?

Sex has become even more commonplace and it is not going anywhere.

The more we deny its grip in society, the less we protect our youth.

Perhaps what we should be asking is what can we do about the hyper-sexualized world that the media has created, not should we provide our youth a Plan B?

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