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The Morning After 1/22/04 It happens every time you open a bottle of cough syrup: a very long piece of paper folded dozens of times and covered with very small words flutters to the ground. It lists all the dosages, side effects, contraindications, and problems associated with the drug you are about to consume. Have you ever wondered how that little piece of paper came to be there? In This Article... The Women are DisposableThe Poor are DisposableNow Teenagers are Disposable, Too The Women are Disposable Dozens of years ago, back in 1960, a radical feminist, a supporter of...

The "Morning After" Pill: Another Republican Sponsored Disaster! By Chuck Baldwin Food For Thought From The Chuck Wagon January 20, 2004 With the anniversary of the infamous Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion on demand just two days away, it is important for the American people to realize that Republicans, even more than Democrats, are responsible for the killing of innocents in the womb. Furthermore, President Bush's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is proposing to put the "morning after" pill on grocery store shelves next to aspirin. Such a move would result in the deaths of even more...

<p>Crystal Clinkingbeard in her pro article of the Dec. 21 News-Leader pro-con, "Should the FDA allow the 'morning after pill' to be sold without a prescription," writes the pill is "safe and effective." Besides raising an abundance of moral, ethical, legal and health problems, my question to her: Is it morally justifiable to market the morning after pill to minors?</p>

<p>As the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers making the morning-after pill available without a prescription, some abortion foes are trying to turn this public health debate into another abortion battle. Extremists insist that easier access to the pill, which can prevent pregnancy after intercourse occurs, will encourage promiscuity, especially among teens. But on this issue, Sherlock Holmes' advice to Dr. Watson is worth heeding: Listen for the dog that isn't barking.</p>

<p>The recommendation of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panels this month to allow the morning-after pill to be sold over the counter is not supported by medical facts and may very well bring about devastating consequences. Granting the morning-after pill over-the-counter status will lead women and young girls to think the drug poses no greater threat than other medicines available without a prescription. But the morning-after pill is not "just another contraceptive," and even a passing glance at the facts is sufficient to prove it does not belong on the same shelf as Tylenol and baby aspirin.</p>

<p>LAST WEEK, when an advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration recommended that the "morning-after pill" called Plan B be available without a prescription, I remembered a teenage girl whose abortion I helped perform as a medical student.</p> <p>The 15-year-old patient, whom I'll call Lakeesha, had a depressingly common situation. Each year, about one in 10 American girls between the ages of 15 and 19 gets pregnant, since about a third of teens use no contraception.</p>

THAT'S LIFE Poison Pills by Michelle Cottle Potentially huge news for women this week: On Tuesday, an FDA advisory panel voted 23 to 4 to recommend permitting over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraceptive commonly known as the morning-after pill. Available by prescription since 1999, Plan B, as the pill is also known, delays ovulation and/or prevents fertilization of an egg if taken up to 72 hours after sexual intercourse. The earlier the pill is taken, the greater its efficacy. If the FDA follows the panel's recommendation--which it typically does--soon women will be able, for about $30 a pop, to obtain...

The Pill From Hell12/17/2003 7:29:00 PM By Barbara Kralis - CCI News Today, December 16, 2003, is an important day in the United States. After listening to numerous pro life doctors, bioethicists and leaders warn of the dangers of allowing the abortifacient pill "Plan B" to be sold over the counter, the U.S. advisory panel to the FDA voted to recommend allowing the "morning after" contraceptive pill to be sold without a prescription. The pill is intended for use by women within 72 hours after sexual intercourse to prevent pregnancy. It's incredulous how these US advisors for the FDA could...

Congratulations, Wendy Wright! As disappointing (if not surprising) as is the news the FDA Has OK'd Morning After Pill for OTC sales, it was especially heartening to see you wipe the floor with Gloria Feldt of Planned Parenthood. (Not an easy feat given how tautly her eyebrows are held in the air.) Picking your battles, you refused to rise to her bait that Concerned Women for America likely oppose this "choice" for "women's health" and stayed the course ... calmly issuing salvo after salvo of pertinent information from other nations already possessed of statistics on the use of the...

December 17, 2003, 6:38 AM EST WASHINGTON -- Women may soon have an easier way to help prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex now that government advisers have recommended that morning-after birth control should be sold without a doctor's prescription. "It's extraordinarily safe," said Dr. Alastair Wood of Vanderbilt University, an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration. In fact, he said, women probably should keep emergency contraception in their medicine cabinet just in case it's ever needed. "We don't tell people to buy a fire extinguisher after the fire started." The panel on Tuesday voted in favor of over-the-counter sales...

As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers approving the over-the-counter sale of an emergency contraceptive known as "the morning-after pill," pro-life and pro-family advocates warn that making the drug available without a prescription will have devastating consequences. In a Tuesday hearing, the FDA heard advice from a panel of 28 gynecologists and pharmacists on whether the agency should approve the over-the-counter (OTC) sale of Plan B, a morning-after pill that can prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. Since Plan B is most effective if taken within 24 hours, its proponents contend that it should be...

WASHINGTON — Medical and women's groups are asking the government to allow a morning-after pill to sell without a prescription, saying easier access could prevent more than a million unplanned pregnancies and hundreds of thousands of abortions every year. If fertilization already has occurred, it prevents the egg from implanting into the uterus, the medical definition of pregnancy. If a woman already had become pregnant, emergency contraception would have no effect. So it hasn't proved nearly as contentious as RU-486, the abortion pill.

Two panels for the Food and Drug Administration will consider early next week whether to allow the so-called morning-after pill, now a prescription drug taken after intercourse to prevent pregnancy, to be sold over the counter. But unlike other more ordinary hearings for drugs like allergy medications to be shifted from prescriptions, this hearing has become entangled in the thorny politics of abortion, raising questions of when a pregnancy begins and who decides. If approved, the drug would be the first emergency contraceptive sold over the counter. Known as Plan B — when Plan A, for contraception, fails or is...

PROPONENTS SAY such a move would greatly increase women’s ability to get the pills in time to prevent pregnancy: preferably within 24 hours but no more than 72 hours after rape, contraceptive failure or just forgetting birth control. The Food and Drug Administration says emergency contraception is very safe to use, but the question is whether women will understand exactly how and when to take it without any professional advice. Indeed, the morning-after pill marks the first in a series of ever more complex over-the-counter switch decisions facing the FDA. Next year, the agency will be asked to allow nonprescription...

(KRT) - Emergency contraception, or the "morning-after pill," is playing a growing role in reducing abortions in the U.S. and may account for almost half of the recent decline in abortions, according to a new study by a leading reproductive health research center.The study, by researchers at the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, involved surveying a nationwide representative sample of more than 10,000 abortion patients in 1994 and 2000.During that period, the number of abortions fell from 1.4 million in 1994 to 1.3 million in 2000, while the use of emergency contraception increased slightly.Emergency contraception consists of ordinary birth-control...

CARMICHAEL, Calif. (AP) California's health maintenance organizations must cover ``morning-after'' contraceptives for women, Gov. Gray Davis announced Wednesday. ``A woman's right to choose must never be held up by red tape,'' said Davis, who's been trumpeting his support for abortion rights and increased access to contraceptives in his re-election fight against Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Simon. Davis is instructing the Department of Managed Health Care, the state's HMO regulator, to inform all HMOs in the state about the new order. Under the directive, HMOs will be required to cover the costs for emergency contraception through participating pharmacists within the HMO's...