Plan B From Outer Space

The compromised approval of Plan B is causing the usual kerfuffle in the usual circles.

Federal approval of the "morning-after" pill for over-the-counter sales should make emergency contraception widely available for the first time by the end of the year, but the new policy excludes the group some doctors say might need it the most -- teenage girls who aren't practicing safe sex.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved Plan B, casually called the morning-after pill, for sale without a prescription to women age 18 and older. If taken within 72 hours of having unprotected sex, Plan B is up to 89 percent effective at preventing pregnancy.

The decision, which ended a three-year battle within the FDA, was considered a compromise by pro-choice and women's health advocates who had hoped to win over-the-counter approval for all women, regardless of age.

Supporters of Plan B have said making the drug more easily accessible to all women could cut in half the number of unplanned pregnancies in the United States every year -- a statement that some conservative groups don't buy, saying over-the-counter sales could lead to sexual promiscuity and, in turn, more unintended pregnancies.

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Plan B, which is distributed by Barr Pharmaceuticals, will be sold only in pharmacies -- including those in grocery stores and convenience stores -- and must be kept behind a counter or in a locked cabinet. The pill costs $25 to $45 now, although pharmacists and doctors say they don't yet know how much it will cost when sold over the counter.

Roughly half of all pregnancies in the United States, or about 3 million each year, are unplanned. About 820,000 teenagers get pregnant every year. The pregnancy rate is much lower among teenagers than among adult women, but supporters of Plan B point out that teenagers are much less likely than adults to have access to birth control.

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Barr Pharmaceuticals had asked for approval to sell Plan B to teenagers 16 and older without a prescription, but the FDA argued that it would be too difficult for pharmacies to ensure that teens younger than 16 didn't buy the drug. As part of the FDA approval, Barr Pharmaceuticals must regularly monitor pharmacies to make sure Plan B is not being sold without a prescription to minors.

Plan B has been available in the United States since 1999, but only with a doctor's prescription. In California and eight other states, some pharmacies have been allowed to write prescriptions for the drug in the store if a pharmacist had received special training.

Seems simple enough. It prevents unwanted pregnancies without functioning as an abortifacent, it costs too much to be popped like TicTacs (which ought to assuage at least some of the concerns of our moral guardians), and it's safe.

So of course, there's a problem.

"Plan B can keep the newly conceived embryo from making it to the uterus in time, as well as have an effect on the lining of the uterus to make it inhospitable to the embryo. That would be abortive," said Deirdre McQuade, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C. "It's complicated. It's not like it always causes an abortion or always works as a contraceptive."

This is lunacy, pure and simple. This is something that can literally prevent thousands of actual abortions per year, and these people want to throw it out because, well, there are rare exceptions where a fertilized egg -- keeping in mind that this has to be taken within 72 hours of intercourse -- might be prevented from implantation in the uterus. That is not moral purity, that is simply blind, destructive absolutism. It's not "complicated" at all, it's a choice between thousands of abortions per year prevented outright versus the chance of a few dozen newly-fertilized eggs not being implanted.

PZ Myers has what is the best explanation of exactly how Plan B works, and why it has nothing whatsoever to do with the abortion issue. There's also an update on how the media, "objective" as always, have utterly screwed up the factual narrative to the "prevents implantation" caveat, as if it had some actual clinical basis, which it does not. And as Myers points out, even if it could be empirically shown that 1 (or 10, or even 1000) of every million uses resulted in such a prevention of implantation, so what?

The line of what constitutes "protection of life" gets pushed further and further back toward the very moment of ejaculation, practically. That this nonsense continues to be presented seriously and "objectively" is a disservice to the practical ramifications of the argument, which affect a lot of actual -- not merely potential -- lives.

One side actually wants to get the number of abortions as low as possible; the other wants to eviscerate Griswold and establish an unconscionable level of control over womens' (specifically) sex lives. Perhaps this would be less of a "contentious issue" if the media presented it as such, rather than continuing this noxious pretense that if we squint hard enough, maybe 2+2 really does equal five.