Common Dreams / Published on Sunday, August 13, 2006 by the Providence Journal (Rhode Island)Barbara Miner
In the time it takes you to read this article, there will be 10 to 15 unintended pregnancies in the United States. Improved access to emergency contraception could have prevented half of them.
Instead, hundreds of thousands of unplanned pregnancies end in abortion every year. You would think that opponents of abortion would embrace emergency contraception. But you would be wrong.
Many in the anti-abortion movement are up in arms over the Food and Drug Administration's recent announcement that it will consider over-the-counter status for the Plan B emergency contraception for those 18 years and older.
The anti-abortionists' concerns are often cloaked in rhetoric about the health and well-being of women, especially adolescents. Yet leading medical groups -- from the American Medical Association to the American Academy of Pediatrics to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists -- strongly advocate over-the-counter status for emergency contraception, including for teenagers.
The American Medical Association notes that widespread access to emergency contraception could annually prevent as many as 1.7 million unintended pregnancies and 800,000 abortions.
Until now, the Bush administration has allowed pressure from the far right to trump science and common sense. The FDA has accordingly dragged its feet for more than three years on non-prescription status for Plan B.
Finally, on July 31, the FDA announced that it would meet with Plan B's manufacturers to amend its application. The far right, on hearing this, launched a new campaign of distortions against emergency contraception. Let's separate fiction from fact.
Fiction: Emergency contraception encourages "increased sexual promiscuity," according to an Aug. 2 e-mail alert from Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati.
Fact: More than 15,000 pages of clinical data from 40 studies were submitted to the FDA with the application for non-prescription status for Plan B, and on this basis the FDA's expert advisory panels rejected the promiscuity allegation. As Dr. Vivian Dickerson, past president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, notes: "EC [emergency contraception] does not increase promiscuity among teenaged women."
Fiction: Sexually transmitted diseases "skyrocketed" in countries allowing non-prescription emergency contraception, according to Wendy Wright, of Concerned Women for America, an influential religious-right group.
Fact: Improved access to emergency contraception "either decreases sexually transmitted diseases or has no effect on them," according to Jonathan Klein, chairman of the National Committee on Adolescence for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Fiction: Non-prescription Plan B would increase use among women who have not been screened for potentially life-threatening complications, according to the arch-conservative Family Research Council.
Fact: Studies have shown that young women can use Plan B "effectively and safely without health-care provider intervention," according to the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement on emergency contraception.
Fiction: Emergency contraception is an abortifacient; it can "snuff out the life of a newly conceived human being," warns the American Life League, in a recent "Action Alert."
Fact: Emergency contraception, which should be used within 72 hours of unprotected sex, "cannot terminate an established pregnancy," according to the American Medical Association policy advocating non-prescription status for Plan B.
Ask yourself: If your daughter, girlfriend, or sister were unexpectedly pregnant, would you turn to the religious right or your doctor for medical advice?
The FDA's decisions should be based on medicine, not religious extremism. Doctors, not ideologues, should set our country's medical policies.
Barbara Miner wrote this for Progressive Media Project, liberal commentary on domestic and international issues, affiliated with The Progressive magazine.
