In a Toronto Star editorial, several leaders in Canadian women's health urged Canada to get "caught up with the rest of the world when it comes to" emergency contraception. EC - also known as Plan B or the Morning-After Pill - is a safe and relatively effective (80%) method of preventing pregnancy after unprotected sex.
EC is currently available to Canadian women with a prescription. Three provincial governments have improved access by authorizing pharmacists to write prescriptions for it, and it appears that will be the case federally soon as well.
But many Canadian health and women's organizations want Health Canada to go one step further, and make EC available over the counter, without professional intervention.
EC is safe, effective, and - despite what you may have heard - not an abortion pill. It only prevents conception; it cannot interfere with an already established pregnancy.
Which begs the question: Then why does the American anti-abortion movement oppose increased access to EC? Indeed, why do they oppose its use under any circumstances?
When the authors of this Star Op-Ed urge Canada to catch up with the rest of the world, they mention Britain, Morocco, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Israel, France, Belgium, Denmark and Portugal. Hmm, who's not on that list?
In the US, a battle has been raging between the reproductive rights movement and the Food and Drug Administration over making EC available over-the-counter. For a while it appeared that the FDA was going to approve it... A few key Bush appointments later, it was dead in its tracks.
None of the FDA's excuses for failing to approve the Morning After Pill makes any sense. It's obvious that it's a purely political decision. Trust me on this one, or read more here. An excerpt:
The FDA’s own scientific experts have recommended that Plan B be made available without a prescription and without age restrictions. Volumes of scientific research and international experience also prove that the drug is safe and effective for women of all ages. And experts estimate that increased access to emergency contraception could cut the U.S. annual rate of three million unplanned pregnancies in half.More than anything else I can think of, the resistance to EC underscores the utter hypocrisy of the anti-abortion movement. If they were truly concerned with preventing abortion, they'd urge that EC be as accessible as possible, because that's exactly what it does. But if their goal is to force people to live by their own particular morality, and to punish women for having sex without the consequences of pregnancy, then their opposition to EC makes perfect sense.
On a nauseating side note, American women in the anti-violence movement are still fighting state legislators to require hospitals to offer EC rape survivors at hospitals. (!!) In New York State, for example, up until last year, hospitals were only required to give a woman who had been raped a prescription for EC. Yet 50% of pharmacies in New York City don't even stock the drug. And why put the woman through any more complications than she's already coping with? Why couldn't a hospital just dispense the drug?
I'm happy to report that it's a battle we won. But it took years. Why was it such a struggle? Why does this have to fought state-by-state?
As far as universal, over-the-counter access to EC, I'll be very interested to see where Health Canada will land.