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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The right has moved its war on abortion from the clinic to the pharmacy, where it now seeks to cripple the sale of contraceptives.
Apr 27, 2005 | One controversy over the morning-after pill is whether it prevents pregnancy or terminates it. Opponents equate the use of "Plan B," as the emergency contraceptive is called, to a chemical abortion. Supporters -- and most physicians -- counter that it does not destroy the embryo but blocks a fertilized egg from becoming implanted in the uterus. But in one sense, contraception may indeed be the new abortion -- that is, the next battleground for reproductive rights.
From conservative pharmacists refusing to dispense birth control pills to abstinence-only programs and anti-condom campaigns, access to contraception is facing tough challenges from the right. The strategy is similar to one that conservatives have used for abortion: Since overturning Roe vs. Wade looks unlikely in the near term, opponents have turned their sights on limiting access to the procedure. Now members of the religious and political right -- including the Bush administration -- are focusing on contraception, raising concern that they will succeed in curbing women's birth control choices and the ability to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
"I am deeply concerned that they have gone further than I have ever seen them. This is far past a woman's right to make decisions regarding abortion to the point now that it's about their right to make decisions on contraception," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., told Salon. Murray and her Senate colleague Hillary Clinton have blocked President Bush's nominee to head the FDA, Lester Crawford, over his inaction as acting director of the agency to approve the morning-after pill for over-the-counter sale. An FDA advisory committee has given the drug overwhelming support as safe and effective, and Canada approved its nonprescription status last week. Publicly, Crawford says his indecision on the drug has nothing to do with ideology, but privately he told Murray it raises his concerns about "behavior," apparently alluding to arguments that the pill will encourage promiscuity.
There are also indications Crawford sides with those that equate Plan B with "chemical abortion." During his confirmation hearing two weeks ago, Clinton asked Crawford: "Would you clarify for the committee that emergency contraception is a method for prevention of pregnancy, not the termination of pregnancy?" Crawford responded: "I may need to confer with the experts in the FDA about exactly what the physiology of it is." Labels on Plan B, the name that its maker, Barr Laboratories, has given it, say "for the prevention of pregnancy."
Crawford's remarks troubled Murray. "We need to have confidence as consumers that the FDA approves drugs based on science and efficacy and not on ideology," she said. Murray added that Crawford's views suggest trouble for reproductive rights advocates if he is confirmed. "New contraceptives have been going on the market in the last few years and they would all be jeopardized by an FDA using ideology instead of science."
So far, Crawford's confirmation vote has not been rescheduled and his appointment has been held up on a different issue -- albeit a "moral" one. The Republican chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Michael Enzi of Wyoming, is calling for a probe into charges Crawford had a "personal relationship" with a female FDA staff member that may have led to her receiving "significant promotions." White House spokesman David Almacy would only say that Bush still backs Crawford and that "we are hopeful they will approve the nomination so he can receive a full Senate vote and ultimately confirmation."
Opposition to Plan B is just the latest and most visible drive by conservatives to curtail contraception, according to Heather Boonstra of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research group for reproductive issues. "There's a constituency out there that equates all contraception with abortion, and they're organizing in concerted ways to denigrate it," she says. That constituency includes a number of social and religious groups, but the one that takes the abortion-contraception connection perhaps the most literally is the American Life League (ALL), one of the largest antiabortion lobbyists. Founded 25 years ago, it claims 300,000 families as members.
"Many forms of so-called contraception work by preventing the implantation of an already created human being, and that kills a baby in the womb, and we consider that to be an early abortion," says ALL's vice president, Jim Sedlak. He says ALL's main mission is to inform women that all hormonal birth control methods and the IUD "are actually causing abortions themselves" and to force manufacturers to put that description prominently on contraceptive labels.
