Abstract

Toothpaste, Cough Drops, Aspirin, Contraception

The author comments on a campaign by conservatives to stop the U.S. FDA from making emergency contraception available over the counter. For a moment it looked as if the FDA was going to do the right thing. It was going to go with medical science and make emergency contraception (EC) available over the counter, so that women who've had unprotected sex would have ready access to a post-coital method that prevents pregnancy 89 percent of the time. This was, after all, the overwhelming recommendation of its own advisory committee. The FDA found it safe and effective in 1999. EC is available over the counter or directly from a pharmacist in some seventeen countries. The current system in the United States, in which women have to find a doctor or clinic and a pharmacy that stocks EC ideally within twenty-four hours (EC works for seventy-two hours, but less effectively as time goes on), is clearly too cumbersome. You would think that anti-choicers would leap to embrace emergency contraception, which, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, already prevents 51,000 abortions a year, making it a significant, if little-noted, factor in the decline in abortion. [But] in December, forty-four Congressional Republicans sent a letter to the FDA advisory committee urging its members to reject OTC status: EC "stacked casually on shelves next to toothpaste and cough drops" would allow "our schoolchildren" easy access to a drug that, according to Jesse Helms, is an "abortifacient." On February 16, FDA head Mark McClellan postponed the agency's decision; now he's leaving to take charge of Medicare, and EC risks being delayed again by future appointees.