FDA leaves teens alone, unprotected
Ellen Goodman
First published: Monday, September 19, 2005
BOSTON -- Now that we have waved "Bye, Bye, Brownie" to Michael Brown,
the hapless head of FEMA, could we turn our sights back to another agency
on the skids: the Food and Drug Administration?
If FEMA is an example of a government run on cronyism, the FDA has become
a portrait of a government run on ideology. After its blunders over Vioxx
and defective heart devices, it has now deliberately tanked the homeland
emergency contraceptives.
Days before Katrina hit New Orleans and flooded the news, FDA chief
Lester Crawford announced that he was indefinitely postponing the sale of
Plan B over the counter. As Susan Wood, the respected head of the FDA's
Office of Women's Health, said when she resigned in protest, "This time
delay is denial."
I will spare you the long, convoluted history of the morning-after pill
and the FDA. Plan B was planted firmly in the common ground in the
culture wars. Pregnancy prevention is, after all, abortion prevention.
It's something we agree on.
Putting Plan B on the drugstore shelf would mean that women who had
unprotected sex or contraceptive failures could easily and quickly
prevent pregnancy.
But under pressure from the pro-life fringe that insists against all
evidence that emergency contraception is abortion in disguise, the FDA
caved. Executing a fandango that Karl Rove himself would admire, the FDA
first boxed the manufacturer into seeking permission for over-the-counter
sales only to those 17 or over. Then it rejected the adults-only plan on
the grounds that the pills could still fall into the hands of younger
teens.
In the furor that followed, what no one dared suggest is that just maybe
teenagers should have the easiest, not the hardest access to Plan B.
Aren't the youngest precisely those who should be most protected from
pregnancy? Or do we still think that motherhood should be the punishment
for sex?
A little background. This is a pill proved safe and effective for all
ages. There is no evidence that its availability increases sexual
activity. But there is a good deal of evidence that teenagers have become
the easy target in the struggle over reproductive rights.
Much of the anti-abortion action can be summed up in two words: Teenagers
First. The abortion case that will come up before soon-to-be Chief
Justice and umpire John Roberts is a New Hampshire law that would impose
further restrictions on abortion. It requires parental notification with
no exception for a pregnant girl whose health is at risk.
Meanwhile in the Senate, one of the top 10 Republican priorities is a
bill that would make it a crime for any adult -- aunt, grandmother or
sister included -- to help a teenager cross state lines to avoid parental
notification laws.
In states like Tennessee, Alabama and Pennsylvania, where teenagers need
to ask a judge for the right to decide for themselves, there are
increasing numbers of jurists opting out of hearing these cases on moral
grounds. So much for mere umpiring.
But back to the elusive common ground. Contraception is also becoming a
teenage combat zone. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma senator who believes in
capital punishment for abortion providers, just introduced a bill that
would require parental notification before contraceptives are given to
minors at federal clinics. Birth control, he believes, "encourages
unintended teen pregnancies and abortions" -- a scientific notion that
qualifies him for a post at the new FDA.
Coburn's misinformation is nothing compared to the abstinence-only
disinformation purveyors who reject even teaching birth control to
teenagers. They fear a "mixed message" -- abstinence plus contraception
-- more than a false one.
The Teenagers First plan works because it is so easily cast as a teenage
protection plan. What parent doesn't want to put up an emotional umbrella
over their child? Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America has
actually described the morning-after pill as "a pedophile's best
friend." Say, what?
We've had good news in the past decade, a 10 percent decline in teen
pregnancies due mostly to contraception and also to abstinence. Yet some
40 percent of girls get pregnant while they are still teenagers.
Meanwhile, 98 percent of parents in one pediatric study said their teens
were virgins. You do the math.
If teenagers also need Plan B it's because Plan A, abstinence, fails more
often than condoms. Too many teenagers end up pregnant, facing Plan C:
abortion or motherhood. In the name of protection, we are leaving
teenagers far too vulnerable.
The FDA has given politics a veto over science. They have used the
teenage cover story to keep emergency contraception out of easy reach of
women of any age. Teenagers first. That's just the beginning.
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=399914
&category=OPINION&newsdate=9/19/2005
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