[Mb-civic] Saving Plan B from the zealots - Ellen Goodman - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

Saving Plan B from the zealots

By Ellen Goodman  |  September 16, 2005

NOW THAT we have waved ''Bye, Bye, Brownie" to Michael Brown, the 
hapless head of FEMA, could we turn our sights back to another agency on 
the skids: the Food and Drug Administration?

If FEMA is an example of a government run on cronyism, the FDA has 
become a portrait of a government run on ideology. After its blunders 
over Vioxx and defective heart devices, it has now deliberately tanked 
the homeland emergency contraceptives.

Days before Katrina hit New Orleans and flooded the news, FDA chief 
Lester Crawford announced that he was indefinitely postponing the sale 
of Plan B over the counter. As Susan Wood, the respected head of the 
FDA's Office of Women's Health, said when she resigned in protest, 
''This time delay is denial."

I will spare you the long, convoluted history of the morning-after pill 
and the FDA. Plan B was planted firmly in the common ground in the 
culture wars. Pregnancy prevention is, after all, abortion prevention. 
It's something we agree on.

Putting Plan B on the drugstore shelf would mean that women who had 
unprotected sex or contraceptive failures could easily and quickly 
prevent pregnancy.

But under pressure from the prolife fringe that insists against all 
evidence that emergency contraception is abortion in disguise, the FDA 
caved. Executing a fandango that Karl Rove would admire, the FDA first 
boxed the manufacturer into seeking permission for over-the-counter 
sales only to those 17 or over. Then it rejected the adults-only plan on 
the grounds that the pills could still fall into the hands of younger teens.

In the furor that followed, what no one dared suggest is that just maybe 
teenagers should have the easiest, not the hardest access to Plan B. 
Aren't the youngest precisely those who should be most protected from 
pregnancy? Or do we still think that motherhood should be the punishment 
for sex?

A little background. This is a pill proved safe and effective for all 
ages. There is no evidence that its availability increases sexual 
activity. But there is a good deal of evidence that teenagers have 
become the easy target in the struggle over reproductive rights.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/09/16/saving_plan_b_from_the_zealots/
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