4th
‘Plan B’ deserves better
The Columbia Chronicle - link
Originally published: June 7, 2005
Increasing the accessibility of emergency contraception (EC) is an important step in dealing with reproductive issues in the United States. Advocates of EC claim that approving over-the-counter sales would help reduce the country’s abortion rate by offering women another option to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
Opponents, however, continue to stand behind their belief that giving Americans such options results in increased promiscuity. In effect, these opponents are telling people that the only way to get out of a bad situation is not to get into it in the first place.
One of these opponents is Dr. W. David Hager, who doesn’t prescribe EC at his own private practice in Kentucky. While Hager’s name may not be familiar to all Americans, we should be encouraged by his decision to step down from the Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs in the Food and Drug Administration when his term ends June 30. Hager, an obstetrician-gynecologist, told the Washington Post on May 21 that he made his decision after being told he could not be reappointed.
Hager said his decision was made before he found himself steeped in controversy regarding an article in the May 30 issue of The Nation, a politically progressive magazine.
During a sermon he delivered at the Asbury College chapel in Wilmore, Ky., Hager spoke about a “minority report” he sent to the FDA commissioner opposing over-the-counter sales of a scientifically approved emergency contraceptive, called “Plan B.”
Hager was one of 27 FDA advisers on women’s health and nonprescription drugs who evaluated Plan B in December 2003. The advisers had voted 23 to 4 to approve over-the-counter sales of Plan B, but less than five months later, the FDA ignored its own experts and retained the prescription-only status.
The logic? A lack of information on the effect on adolescent girls of Plan B’s increased availability. The committee’s reason for rejecting the application was the same fear Hager had expressed in his “minority report.” The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called the FDA ruling a “dark stain on the reputation of an evidence-based agency like the FDA,” according to The Nation.
It was equally disturbing when The Nation reported that the FDA had been given six studies examining whether the availability of an emergency contraceptive would increase “risky” behavior in teenagers, and each one of the reports found no evidence for such a connection.
Hager was hand-picked by the White House for the reproductive drugs panel, and under the Bush administration, it has become apparent that the only option the government wants to offer the sexually active is the recommendation of abstinence. As a matter of fact, $167 million is being spent by the federal government this year to promote the abstinence-only message.
The abstinence message comes in the face of a $45 million study that appeared in the April 2005 Journal of Adolescent Health.
The report found that 88 percent of high school students who pledged to maintain their virginity as part of government-funded abstinence programs end up having sex before they are married. Additionally, such pledgers are less likely to use a condom and are more likely to experiment with oral or anal sex when avoiding vaginal sex.
Hager has been championed by the Christian community for his efforts, but the criticism he received from The Nation article stems greatly from a close critic the piece revolved around—one of Hager’s former co-authors and his ex-wife, Linda Carruth Davis. In the story, Davis alleged that over a seven year period leading up to their divorce in 2002, Hager sodomized her repeatedly—often without her consent.
Hager’s decision to refuse comment on his ex-wife’s claims sheds light on a sorrier truth: Cries against additional forms of protection, made out of fear that the result will be moral bankruptcy, usually come from critics whose own ethics are already in ruin.
