Once Again, Administration's Ideology Elbows Science Aside


If you are looking for the science that matters most in
Washington these days, it's political science.

The answer to
everything from global warming to mercury in the water seems to be
found in the dubious data of ideology.
Nevertheless, for one brief moment it looked as if the Food and
Drug Administration actually was going to weigh the evidence on an
objective scale. In December, an advisory panel voted 24-3 to
recommend that emergency contraception be sold over the counter and
without a prescription. It looked like a done deal.


The morning-after pill, or Plan B as it is named, occupies a
rare patch of common ground in the struggles over abortion. If
there is one thing that both pro-choice and pro-life
people agree on, it's the desire
to reduce the number of abortions. Most of us want fewer
unintended pregnancies.
Plan B, as the name implies, is the backup when Plan A fails.


It's the second chance to avoid pregnancy ... after sex.

It's what
you can do instead of waiting in a high state of anxiety.
The technology has been around since the birth control pill.
It's more or less what women do when they forget to take the pill
one day; they take more of them the next day. Taken soon enough,
you can prevent more than 75 percent of the pregnancies.


Emergency contraception already is available with a prescription
from a doctor. The problem is the word "emergency." Ever try to get
a medical appointment the Sunday morning after the night
before?
That isn't the only hassle. Last month in Texas, a rape victim
handed her prescription to a pharmacist who took it in the back
room, prayed and then refused to fill it on "moral grounds.

"
Just for the record, Plan B isn't an abortion pill. Contrary to
the popular notion that sperm travels at the speed of light, it
takes up to 24 hours for an egg to be fertilized and three days to
make the uncertain trip into the uterus. The after-the-act
contraceptive prevents pregnancy; it doesn't work if you are
pregnant.
But after the FDA advisory committee agreed that it was safe to
sell Plan B over the counter, there was a flurry of letters from
conservative members of Congress.

"The new fight,"' says a
frustrated Kirsten Moore, president of the Reproductive
Health Technologies Project, "is
that it will lead to teenage promiscuity." The FDA has chosen to
"review" the question for as long as another trimester. Do I
hear the beakers of science crashing again on the
administration's floor?
We have just had another batch of good news on the teen front.
The rates of pregnancy and abortion continue to go down, a full 28
percent in the last dozen
years.

It's widely agreed by
researchers that the lower rates are due to both less sex and
more birth control.
But many on the right continue to argue that the message of
abstinence is undermined by the message of birth control. Their
Plan A is Abstinence or Else.
Why has it been so hard to make emergency contraception easy?
There is no evidence that having the morning-after pill available
on the drugstore shelf leads teenagers or any other women down the
path of unprotected sex.

There is, on the other hand, a whole lot
of evidence that a backup will prevent pregnancy.
"If the FDA were to go against its advisers," Ms. Moore says,
"it would deny the evidence and take away the possibility of
getting some common ground on this issue and giving women a second
chance to reduce the rates of unwanted pregnancy."
Our country still has 3 million unintended pregnancies per year,
the highest rate in the industrialized world among adults and
teens.

Half of them end up as abortions. This is where pro-life
ought to meet pro-choice. And this is where we should get the
politics out of the science and get Plan B on the drugstore
shelf.
By Ellen Goodman
Dallas Morning News - 3/5/2004
Topic: White House

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