Sen. Patty Murray of Washington called it “the worst double cross I’ve ever seen” in 13 years in the United States Senate.
Dr. Stephanie Teal, director of family planning at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, called it a blow to women’s reproductive rights.
Last Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration bowed to anti-abortionists and prudes, delaying a plan that would help American women get emergency contraception for unwanted pregnancies.
The irony of the FDA’s decision, said Murray, Teal and others, is that access to emergency contraception can reduce abortions.
FDA chief Lester Crawford said he wants two months of public comments before ruling on the so-called Plan B pills that Barr Laboratories wants to sell over the counter instead of by prescription.
You wonder what’s left to say.
Plan B is safe and effective in preventing unwanted pregnancies, said Teal, an obstetrician and gynecologist.
“The hormone in it has been used for decades in birth-control pills with no safety concerns,” Teal said. “The dose is the same for all. It’s difficult to overdose. The instructions are easy. It’s been used by millions of women worldwide with zero safety concerns.”
Why Americans can’t get it over the counter has nothing to do with science.
It has to do with anti-abortionists who consider some emergency contraception abortion. Those people helped elect George Bush and now want payback.
“The people cheering this (FDA) decision are cheering it over abortion,” Murray said. “They are redefining abortion.”
The morality police who voted for Bush are also happy to have the FDA parrot the myth that forcing women to have unwanted babies will curb teen sex.
Murray said Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt promised her a decision on Plan B by Thursday if she let Crawford’s appointment to the FDA go through the Senate. Leavitt, she said, double-crossed her.
The greatest betrayal here is of American women.
In December 2003, the FDA’s own advisory board unanimously agreed that emergency contraception could be sold safely over the counter. At the same time, the advisory board voted 23-4 to recommend that Plan B be made available to women of all ages.
“The FDA advisory board,” said CU’s Teal, “are the best reproductive scientists out there.”
Ignoring their experts, FDA administrators refused in May 2004 to approve over-the-counter sale of Plan B. They wanted more evidence that young teenagers using the drug would not harm their health or become more promiscuous.
In July 2004, Barr came back with a proposal to make Plan B available without prescription to women 16 and older.
The FDA owed Barr a decision on this revision by Januarycq. Instead, it waited until Friday, then announced yet another delay. Crawford expressed concern about approving a drug for over-the-counter sales in the same dose and packaging as a prescription drug. He fretted about keeping the drug from girls younger than 17.
It’s all a smoke screen.
“The scientific panel has approved this,” Murray said. “What else could be holding it up? The American public needs to rely on the FDA to make sound scientific decisions.”
Plan B “will reduce abortions,” insisted Meg Froelich, acting executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado. “This is technology coming to the rescue.”
That would be the rescue of women who don’t want to face the difficult choice of whether to end a pregnancy.
What Plan B can never do is satisfy anti-abortionists clinging to theology instead of science. Plan B can never deliver the abstinence-only folks from their delusion that they can force teenagers to stop making whoopee.
So delaying a decision on emergency contraception to cater to these people has only one explanation.
“If it’s not a scientific problem,” said Teal, “then it has to be political or administrative. And it’s not administrative.”
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
