Young: The unfathomable war against contraception
By JOHN YOUNG
Cox News Service
Monday, July 03, 2006 WACO, Texas - Two significant and long-awaited statements came the other day about birth control. One was three years in the making. The other took a year to compose. The one that took a year came from President Bush. Last year Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., wrote the president asking his position on birth control. Getting no reply, she wrote again. And again. And again. After five letters, which came to bear the signatures of 42 members of Congress, Maloney finally got an answer. Assistant Secretary for Health John Agwunobi wrote that the administration "supports the availability of safe and effective products and services to assist responsible adults in making decisions about preventing or delaying conception." Amazing, isn't it? Not that it would take so long. What's amazing is that this would be news, or even in question. After all, a Harris Poll found that 90 percent of Americans support the use of contraception. Check that. Harris found that 90 percent of Catholics support contraception. Among Americans, the number is 93 percent. Yet, New York Times Magazine recently presented the alarming case that our government is a staging platform for a "war on contraception." Considering how many Americans use contraception, or support it matter-of-factly, this is comparable to being governed by forces sworn to eradicate peanut butter or fluorescent lights. Yes, the issues aren't comparable. But public acceptance being comparable, how could officials elected by the people be so inclined? Maybe it's because the people who ought to care just don't. They should. Making it possible for one to control one's reproductive destiny short of a crisis pregnancy would be, should be, one of the centerpieces of health policy, sort of like reading or math in education. The nation has one such tool with emergency contraception - Plan B. No, it's not the "abortion pill," although opponents try to rope it into the same off-limits reservation as RU 486. Having Plan B available for over-the-counter use makes it more likely that unintended pregnancies will be prevented. So said a Food and Drug Administration panel. Yet FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford last year shelved the matter. He cited the potential use or abuse by minors, something that could be said about anything from aspirin to Listerine. Another assertion is that easy access would increase promiscuity. The same could be said about having condoms in gas-station vending machines. The real "issue" is expressed by the anti-contraceptive fringe: that Plan B could cause a fertilized egg not to implant. Most biologists consider conception to include implantation, so this doesn't meet their definition of abortion. Nonetheless, some opponents call Plan B an abortifacient. They say the same of the birth control pill. It has essentially the same qualities as Plan B, just in lower doses. Polls consistently show that most Americans would not ban abortion. Even among the minority that would, the numbers affirm that most support contraception. Surely one would want as much if one really cared about averting unwanted pregnancies. Policy, therefore, is being dictated by a minority of a minority. Condoms and HPV On a similar front, earlier I mentioned a statement that was three years in the making. It came last week. A major study found that condoms, when properly used, are very effective against HPV ‹ the virus that causes cervical cancer. Revealed in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study is a rebuttal to one of the supposed trump cards used to decry condom use - that it prevents AIDS but not HPV. Indeed, the HPV threat has been a cornerstone of the abstinence-only movement. These are not facts it wants to hear or share. But most Americans want to know what works to prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. And they'll support the availability of anything that will prevent either problem. When will that desire be expressed in public policy? When enough Americans know enough about the matter to care. John Young is Opinion Page editor of the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald.
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