What Comes After Plan B?

Did FDA let politics trump science over morning-after pill?

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Federal drug regulators compromised their usual science-based decision-making process when they ruled in 2004 against letting the morning-after birth control pill be sold without a prescription, congressional investigators said Monday.

A detailed report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) bolstered critics' charges that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had yielded to political pressure from social conservatives, who feared that easier access to the drug would encourage promiscuity.

In an examination of the agency's May 2004 decision, the GAO found that "four aspects of [the] review process were unusual" and that the entire decision-making process was "not typical."

Maybe the worst part about this story for me is that it's not even surprising anymore. Of course the administration lied and ignored the facts and then tried to cover it all up. I feel like going to Washington with a lamp in my hand and looking for the one time that the administration was honest about something.

Except I'm not crazy enough to think I'd ever find it.