After a three-year-long debate, the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved wider distribution of a “morning-after” contraceptive, angering some religious conservatives and anti-abortion groups.
FDA officials announced Aug. 24 that they had approved nonprescription sales of “Plan B,” a drug designed to prevent ovulation and fertilization of a woman’s egg. The decision, however, only allows women 18 years of age or older to have over-the-counter access to the drug.
The decision comes just days after the agency’s acting director said he was prepared to expand the drug’s availability and President George W. Bush expressed solidarity with that decision. Both actions angered some groups opposed to abortion rights.
Plan B is basically a heavier dose of birth control pills. Under the regimen, a woman takes two pills, one within 72 hours of sexual intercourse and another 12 hours later. The “morning-after” pill, also known as emergency contraception, works to restrict ovulation in a woman.
But some research has shown that it also can, in rare circumstances, act after conception, thereby causing an abortion, anti-abortion groups point out. This mechanism of the drug blocks implantation of a tiny embryo in the uterine wall.
Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land called it “a sad day for America.”
“Allowing drugs with such powerful physiological and emotional effects to be sold over the counter to adults without a prescription will have significant consequences, none of them good,” said Land, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
“It will certainly result in the pharmacological, spontaneous abortion of large numbers of babies, who will be conceived but known only to God. Plan B will snuff out their lives before implantation can occur. Although no one will know whether conception occurred, and the Plan B-induced abortion will be at the earliest stages of the baby’s development, it is still the medically induced ending of an innocent human life.”
Plan B is different from RU-486 (also known as Mifeprex or mifepristone), which the FDA has already approved amid similar controversy. RU-486 is intended to end pregnancies after an egg has been fertilized.
Plan B has been available for several years on a prescription basis to women of all ages. It contains higher doses of chemicals used in common birth-control pills. The two-pill regimen is supposed to be taken as soon as possible after sexual intercourse, in order to prevent an unintended pregnancy.
In addition to considering it tantamount to abortion, pro-life groups have opposed widening availability of Plan B on the basis that it may lead to more promiscuity.
Some contend the drug may be dangerous for adolescent girls to use without a doctor’s supervision.
Due to the opposition, making Plan B available on a nonprescription basis has been tied up in FDA approval channels since 2003. That year, an advisory panel of outside scientists voted overwhelmingly to approve the manufacturer’s request to allow over-the-counter availability.
But a Bush appointee at the agency decided not to accept the recommendation — spurring charges that the agency was reacting to President Bush’s conservative religious backers rather than experts on the drug.
The agency continued to delay a final decision on the issue, and controversy over it continued to mount, until mid-August of this year.
That’s when President Bush’s current appointee to head the FDA, Andrew von Eschenbach, said he would support allowing over-the-counter Plan B sales to adult women. President Bush, in an Aug. 21 press conference, said he backed von Eschenbach’s position.
FDA officials reached an agreement with the pill’s manufacturer to limit nonprescription sales of the drug to pharmacies and health clinics, and they will still require women to show identification when requesting the drug.
In a memorandum, the FDA released along with the announcement, von Eschenbach said that using “well-established state and private-sector infrastructures will allow for comprehensive and effective enforcement of the age-based restrictions.” (ABP, BP)
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