Plan B: Break it to us gently!

MONDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2011

Rachel Maddow seems to say the Iranians made us do it: Many progressives were upset by Obama’s stance on Plan B. Even the editors at the Washington Post said he made the wrong call (click this).

Many progressives were very upset—unless they watched the Maddow Show, where Rachel broke it to us gently. We’ve been beating up Maddow too much of late, but we thought this episode was worth noting.

Rachel likes to rant and yell when "those people" intrude on choice. What follows is her full report on the Plan B decision. It came at the end of Wednesday’s show, shoehorned into a three-part goulash. If you blinked, you missed it:

MADDOW (12/7/11): Meanwhile, elsewhere in politics, Rod Blagojevich, Democratic former governor of Illinois, was sentenced today to 14 years in federal prison being found guilty on 17 felony corruption charges. Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office in 2009, but in criminal court, among other bleeping outrages, the governor was convicted of trying to sell an appointment to the United States Senate seat that was vacated when then- Senator Barack Obama became President Obama.

Mr. Blagojevich is the fourth Illinois governor, the fourth one, to get sent to prison in the last 40 years.

And also, meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to make Plan B available over the counter without a prescription has been blocked by the secretary of health and human service, by Kathleen Sebelius. Plan B is an emergency contraception you take after sex to reduce the chance of pregnancy. Plan B is available now over the counter to women over the age of 17, but if you are younger than that you need a prescription.

Since you really ought to take this within a day or two, having to get a prescription for this effectively means you can’t really use it effectively at all.

The FDA wanted to change that. They say all reputable studies and experts agree that it is safe for Plan B to be available over-the-counter to anyone, but the Obama administration has blocked that recommendation today.

And meanwhile, meanwhile, you remember yesterday, we reported that the State Department had opened a new fake or rather online embassy in Iran? We do not have an actual physical embassy in Tehran because—well, for obvious reasons. But yesterday, as we reported on this show, the State Department launched a new English and Farsi language Web site so Iranians could get information about U.S. policies and about traveling to the United States, all the sorts of things that an embassy normally does when it exists in bricks and mortar. We were just going to do it online.

So finding out about the online embassy, that was yesterday. Launched yesterday. Today, that new virtual U.S. embassy Web site was blocked inside Iran. Shocker. Still though at least we are trying to.

That does it for us tonight. We will see you again tomorrow from back home in New York City.

Now, it is time for The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. Have a great night.

As always, so wondrously cutesy with the "meanwhile meanwhile" stuff! At any rate, that was Maddow’s complete closing segment. You might have thought the Iranians made us do it, if you weren’t listening closely.

We’re not saying Maddow was wrong to play it this way. We’re just saying.