Friday, August 26, 2005
An Interface Between LIfe and Death
The FDA has once again put off a decision regarding allowing over-the-counter sale of the so-called morning-after pills. I, for one, wonder what the rumpus is about. The problem, they say, is implementing the committee's desire to limit sales to 17 year-olds and older. If it's over-the-counter, how do you get that done? (Have the package's bar code trigger a message in the register to ask for ID, like they do with alcohol in grocery stores? Just a suggestion).
That's not what's really causing the hold-up, I think. It's abortion politics. As the story in the NYT reveals:
Some conservatives say the pill, viewed by the drug agency as a contraceptive, is really an abortion pill. Liberals respond that easier access to it would actually reduce the 800,000 abortions a year in the United States.
The morning-after pill gives the worried woman a super shot of synthetic estrogen and progestin which, in turn, prevents any fertilized egg, fresh from a roll down the Fallopian tube, from embedding in the lining of the womb. There are thousands of fertilized eggs every day which don't embed (or implant) in time naturally and are flushed at menses--this inability to get the egg implanted constitutes a measurable percentage of all infertility. I'd hardly call it an abortion to take a substance to prevent this implanting. After all the contraceptive pill taken almost all month does exactly the same thing.
Purists don't defer. The egg is life, they say, even if it's never going to develop, and making it never implant or develop by taking drugs is an abortion. Purists are none too fond of contraception (other than rhythm) either. Most people, however, see it more like a smart contraceptive (taken only when it's needed). Most women I've been with who needed to take it, don't really like what the concentrated version of the pill does to their body and hormonal balance.
My prediction is that the pill (called Plan B) will be over-the-counter before 2007.
That's not what's really causing the hold-up, I think. It's abortion politics. As the story in the NYT reveals:
Some conservatives say the pill, viewed by the drug agency as a contraceptive, is really an abortion pill. Liberals respond that easier access to it would actually reduce the 800,000 abortions a year in the United States.
The morning-after pill gives the worried woman a super shot of synthetic estrogen and progestin which, in turn, prevents any fertilized egg, fresh from a roll down the Fallopian tube, from embedding in the lining of the womb. There are thousands of fertilized eggs every day which don't embed (or implant) in time naturally and are flushed at menses--this inability to get the egg implanted constitutes a measurable percentage of all infertility. I'd hardly call it an abortion to take a substance to prevent this implanting. After all the contraceptive pill taken almost all month does exactly the same thing.
Purists don't defer. The egg is life, they say, even if it's never going to develop, and making it never implant or develop by taking drugs is an abortion. Purists are none too fond of contraception (other than rhythm) either. Most people, however, see it more like a smart contraceptive (taken only when it's needed). Most women I've been with who needed to take it, don't really like what the concentrated version of the pill does to their body and hormonal balance.
My prediction is that the pill (called Plan B) will be over-the-counter before 2007.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 10:02 PM 
