EC Still Inaccessible for Military Women

For years, reproductive rights advocates have argued that when it came to policy decisions around women's health, the Bush administration was driven by politics, not science.  Well, just last week, in complete  vindication of those arguments, a federal court found that the Food and Drug Administration, under President Bush's leadership, had been improperly influenced by "political considerations" in its decision-making around Plan B, the drug commonly known as the morning-after-pill.  The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ordered the FDA to reconsider its 2006 decision to allow only women 18 and older to get Plan B without a prescription.  The court also ordered the agency to make Plan B available without a prescription to 17 year olds within in 30 days. 

The judge in the case said that the FDA had over the years unjustifiably delayed issuing a determination on whether the contraceptive should be sold over-the-counter, and when the agency was finally pushed into a political corner, it approved Plan B only for 18 and older, despite their own scientists having found it safe and effective for all age groups. With this ruling we have succeeded in expanding access and hope to ultimately make it fully available to all women.

But emergency contraception is still difficult to access for many groups of women, including the more than 200,000 women serving in the Armed Services. It's excluded from the list of what military facilities, including the primary stores where families shop, are required to stock.  That can be particularly challenging for women and families who are based overseas and rely solely on those facilities to buy over-the-counter drugs. More than 160,500 American female soldiers have served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East since the war began in 2003.  According to a 2007 Department of Defense Report, there were 2,688 reported sexual assaults involving military personnel in 2007. Why would the government limit these women's ability to prevent unintended pregnancies?

This is undoubtedly another example of the Bush administration playing politics with women's health.  In 2002, the Department of Defense, relying on its technical experts, initially approved emergency contraception for its Basic Care Formulary, which would have required that it be stocked at all military treatment facilities. That approval was quickly rescinded when it reached the radar of political appointees. Uncannily, it sounds like what was going on at the FDA:  scientists support access to emergency contraception and political pressure shuts it down. Now, it's available only at those military health facilities that decide to make it available. In the meantime, the lack of the contraceptive doubly victimizes servicewomen who experience sexual assault - some of whom suffer from trauma serious enough to impair their military careers.

In the last Congress, then-Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Michael Michaud (D-Maine), introduced legislation that would have required full access to emergency contraception for servicewomen at all U.S. military health care facilities around the world.  We no longer, however, need to wait for Congressional action to right this wrong. President Obama has promised to restore scientific integrity to government actions in his administration.

Join me in calling on President Obama to direct Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, to make Plan B available to our servicewomen. Click here to send President Obama a message.