THE RELIGIOUS CONSULTATION
on population, reproductive health & ethics

The Oregonian, May 20, 2004

EDITORIAL: Another Reason to Visit Canada

Heading north for morning-after pills would work, but Americans should be able to get them easily here American senior citizens hunting for affordable prescription drugs may soon get some unexpected company on the road to Canada: American women and their husbands or boyfriends, heading to the nearest country where emergency contraception is safe, legal and readily accessible.

Within the next few months, the Canadian government is expected to make the so-called "morning-after pill" available without a prescription at any pharmacy in the country. Each province would set a minimum age requirement, and the drug would be available after a consultation with the pharmacist.

This proposal, announced Tuesday in Canada, is a smart way to dispense a pill that prevents pregnancies. The United States should follow suit. Its current approach of treating emergency contraception like an abortion pill and keeping it out of reach is based on politics, not common sense.

The morning-after pill works like a high-speed birth control pill of last resort. Taken within 72 hours of intercourse, it can prevent an egg from being fertilized. It also can prevent a fertilized embryo from implanting in the uterus. It does not cause an abortion. Even so, some anti-abortion groups see this pill as immoral. They've put pressure on the Bush administration and the Food and Drug Administration to keep the drug as inaccessible as possible.

The pressure seems to have worked -- or at least helped. Steven Galson, the acting director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, decided earlier this month to keep the morning-after pill as a prescription-only drug. He defied the advice of the FDA's own scientific advisory panel, which voted unanimously in December that the morning-after pill was safe, and 23-4 in favor of making it available over the counter.

Galson also ignored his own staff, the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, all of whom endorsed the over-the-counter sale of morning-after pills as a safe, effective and medically sound practice.

Galson's reason? He said the maker of the "Plan B" morning-after pill didn't prove that girls under 16 could figure out how to take it.

His successor should reverse this decision. David Greenberg, president of Planned Parenthood of the Columbia/Willamette, puts it this way: "What seems especially odd to me is, they're not trusting that kids under 16 can make good decisions -- but they're trusting those kids would make good parents?"

Nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned. The rates are predictably high among teenagers drawn to unprotected sex by the proven risk factors of substance abuse, peer pressure and low self-esteem. But the rates of unplanned pregnancies are also surprisingly high among married couples, who have the same problems with unreliable condoms and unaffordable birth control that other sexually active people do.

Giving people of all ages a readily accessible and safe tool of last resort makes sense.

It's certainly more sensible than having drug policies that turn Canada into the nation's pharmacy of last resort.

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