Imagine waking up tomorrow to learn your preferred condom brand’s most recent shipment was defective. You spend weeks obsessing over how you could have been more careful, but eventually your ex calls with news that will change your lives forever.
This nightmare could become reality for the owners of 1 million recalled packets of birth control and their partners.
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer issued a recall of the pills earlier this month. The pills were packaged incorrectly, with placebos replacing some of the actual birth control pills, a mistake which makes users vulnerable to pregnancy.
I sympathize with the affected women, who could end up spending several hundred thousand dollars for Pfizer’s mistake over the lifetime of their children, but determining exactly who deserves compensation could be incredibly difficult.
Even though the identification numbers for the recalled pills have been posted online, simply getting pregnant after buying the faulty pills will probably not be enough evidence in court to secure damages.
Since no form of birth control is advertised as 100 percent effective, the number of pregnant women will have to significantly exceed the pill’s expected failure rate. Pfizer will likely also seek proof the women were actually taking their prescribed birth control at the time of conception.
The comments section on any article covering the recall seems to invariably lapse into arguments over the risks inherent in having sex with or without birth control. Many of these comments display a severe lack of empathy, seemingly ignoring just how terrible of a situation these women have been put through by Pfizer’s mistake.
Unwanted pregnancy will change these women’s lives in unimaginable ways, and chastising them for having sex displays the same repugnant “blame the victim” mentality extended by many toward rape victims.
I don’t remember anyone blaming motorists for their Toyotas accelerating out of control during the company’s recall a few years ago. Driving obviously puts motorists at risk for car accidents, but that risk does not make it acceptable for a company to sell its customers a defective or dangerous product.
These women’s lives will never be the same, and Pfizer should be obligated to help them deal with their pregnancy and grant them some amount of compensation for the whole ordeal.
If a woman decides to abort, Pfizer should cover the cost. If the woman chooses to bring the baby to term, Pfizer should foot the hospital bills.
And if the woman puts her baby up for adoption, Pfizer should definitely cover any costs associated with finding a suitable family.
Pfizer owes any women who keep their children either a considerable lump sum or a stipend akin to child support. Pfizer should not be required to foot the bill for expenses like college tuition, but they should be held responsible for a significant portion of the expenses of raising a child.
These women should not be held accountable for Pfizer’s mistake.
Obviously, these women were not trying to have children  — they were taking birth control. This likely means they are not properly equipped to raise a child, whether they are too young and financially insecure or too old, which would put the child at increased risk for developmental disorders.
Any University students affected by the recall will likely be forced to put their education on hold or even give up their college aspirations entirely.
If these women became pregnant after forgetting to take their pill, their situation would be unfortunate, but they would only have themselves to blame.
But women who faithfully followed their regimen had nothing to do with Pfizer selling them a defective product, and they deserve the company’s help in rectifying its mistake.
Andrew Shockey is a 21-year-old biological engineering junior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Ashockey.
 
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Contact Andrew Shockey at [email protected].