Plan B

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - September 1, 2006

The August 24 decision of the Food and Drug Administration to allow women over 18 to have access to the Plan B morning after pills without a prescription has left Catholic and pro-life leaders outraged. These pills are very heavy doses of the same chemical present in birth control pills, which not only work to prevent ovulation and therefore conception, but also provoke abortions through preventing the implantation of already-conceived embryos.

Those pushing Plan B had complained for years that approval of it over-the-counter was being held up not for scientific reasons, but political ones, namely, because of the complaints by pro-lifers about the abortifacient nature of these pills.

But that is and always has been a smokescreen. In reality, Plan B was approved precisely for political reasons, not scientific ones. This can be seen readily from the fact that the birth control pill itself is available for women of any age only under prescription. Doctors and the FDA, because of the pill's serious attendant side-effects, deem it medically necessary to monitor its use. To require a prescription for the birth control pill but not for a forty-times-more-concentrated version of the same drug is unscientific and medically dangerous.

The FDA's ruling, moreover, defies common sense. It would be like requiring background checks to obtain hand-guns but not to acquire assault rifles, or carding teenagers who want to buy beer but not those who want to purchase whiskey. If there's a medical reason for requiring prescriptions for birth control pills, then there is necessarily a stronger one for a super-concentrated form of the pill.

What are the political reasons in favor of making Plan B available over-the-counter that trumped the medical and scientific ones? There is plainly the financial incentive for Barr Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of the drug. It has been spending huge sums lobbying the FDA for years to provide unrestricted access to the drug, for such an approval would multiply its profits. The stronger political motivation, however, can be seen by the similarly-forceful lobbying efforts of Planned Parenthood of America and the euphoria of its leaders over the FDA decision. Even though access to Plan B may initially be seen to cut into PPA's multi-million dollar abortion business, the FDA decision affirms one of the fundamental pillars of the pro-abortion position: that there is a "right" to sex without consequences, and hence women must have an unfettered access to any or all means necessary to prevent the natural consequences of sexual activity. Even if it endangers the woman's health. Even if it may kill another life within her. The woman's choice must trump every other concern.

That President Bush seemed to succumb to that pressure from the pharmaceutical and abortion lobby, and chose to support and enable the decision by acting FDA commissioner, Andrew von Eschenbach, is troubling. When asked in a press conference three days before the decision about his general thoughts on Plan B and specifically whether he would stand by a plan of the Commissioner to make it available over-the-counter, the President stated he would support "whatever Andy decides." He added only that he believes Plan B "ought to require a prescription for minors." That is the policy that von Eschenbach, unsurprisingly, announced.

This un-Solomonic distinction by the president and the FDA was acceptable to no one. Both sides of the debate agree that there's either a medical reason for a prescription or not, and no reason why a seventeen year-old would need one but an eighteen year-old would not. But beyond this obvious criticism, that the President would think that age is the only relevant issue in the question of an abortifacient drug is revealing and disturbing.

Pro-life leaders were just to criticize him. As Father Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, remarked, "It is duplicitous of the president to claim he vetoed federal funding of embryonic stem cell research in the name of building a culture of life while turning a blind eye to the lethal effects of Plan B. … Plan B kills the same innocent unborn children that the embryonic stem cell research process does."

The president's infidelity to his pro-life principles may have serious electoral consequences as well, particularly as midterm congressional and senatorial elections approach. In the past three presidential elections, practicing Catholic voters have swung a stunning twenty points in the Republican direction. But a poll released last week by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life revealed that the Republicans are squandering those gains. In the last year alone, the percentage of Catholics and white Evangelical Protestants who say that the Republican Party is friendly to religion fell 14 points. Pollsters affirmed that the downward trend stems from the betrayal Catholics and Evangelicals feel over the position of several Republican congressional leaders to fund embryonic stem cell research and over the failure of a Republican-led Congress to pass an amendment to defend marriage. As standard bearer of his party, the President's perfidy on an abortifacient drug is likely only to accelerate rather than reverse this trend.

If the president continues in this way to alienate the voters that elected him, then he and his administration may discover that that base may look for a plan b in terms of the presidential candidates and parties they support.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.