The amendment states that a pharmacy can’t be sued for not carrying medication and that the state cannot revoke a license if a pharmacy does not carry certain medication. It specifically mentions Plan B.

Rep. Cynthia Davis, R-O’Fallon, argued that businesses owners should have the right to choose what products they carry.

“I have trouble understanding why anybody who is an American, who is not in favor of Communism, would want us to dictate what we’re going to say people can and cannot stock,” Davis said.

Communism?? Please! Missouri has many rural areas where there may be just one pharmacy for miles. If your pharmacy won’t carry Plan B, then you have no hope of getting the drug quickly.

Plan B has nothing to do with being American or being Communist.

That’s a big deal and the official end to this  protracted battle with the former  administration that placed its anti-birth control agenda  over the sound medical advice of its own FDA advisory boards! 

Special thanks to:
1. Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray who forced the FDA to act on Plan B in 2006;
2. Former assistant FDA Commissioner Susan Wood for taking a public stand;
3. The Center for Reproductive Rights for challenging the FDA in court;  and
4. Aliza Lederer-Plaskett for having the courage and fortitude to be the sole 17-year-old plaintiff in this lawsuit that has resulted in such a powerful victory.

 To start the ball rolling, Duramed, the manufacturer of Plan B, will now submit an application to the FDA to sell Plan B to 17-year-olds without a prescription.

In addition, it has been reported that the FDA is not appealing any part of the court’s ruling–meaning that the FDA is required to go back and reconsider the Citizen’s Petition  to make Plan B available otc to all women regardless of age and without additonal restrictions. 

“We are pleased that the F.D.A. is taking the necessary steps to comply with the court’s order,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, whose 2005 lawsuit against the agency led to last month’s judicial decision. “It’s time the F.D.A. restores confidence in its ability to safeguard the public health and put medical science first.”

FDA Statement

The temporary order was written to apply to the two pharmacists who sued claiming the state law violates their religious freedom. Although it specifies these two pharmacists, it is expected to be applied to all in Illinois.  The restraining order will be in effect until the judge hears arguments from the two pharmacists.

The pharmacists refuse to dispense emergency contraception (EC) because they oppose abortion. This religious objection is often applied to dispensing all birth control, including condoms. States have attempted to resolve this dilemma by requiring another pharmacist to be on the premises who does not share the religious objections, or for another pharmacy to be in close proximity so that the client’s health care needs can be met.

A pharmacist’s refusal to dispense birth control can be an untenable decision for women. What if the pharmacy is the only one for miles around?  What if it is the only one that takes the woman’s insurance?

EC, which is 89% effective if taken within three days of unprotected sex but can be taken up to five days after sex, prevents pregnancy by delaying ovulation.  It in no way affects a pregnancy or a fetus.  (If the woman is pregnant, she’ll still be pregnant after using EC!)

Because EC is so time sensitive, a pharmacist’s decision not to dispense it can have devastating effects.  Any delays in taking Plan B will lessen its effectiveness.  Not dispensing birth control is the trump card in depriving women of independence.

Anyway, on to today’s blog. The presidential election this year is pretty much on everybody’s mind. We’re adding a category here about the election – so if you run across any stories on how the candidates feel on EC, please sent them in.

Here’s an article on Huckabee, and who he’s been speaking to about stem cells, gun laws, and emergency contraception:

Mike Huckabee last year accepted $52,000 in speaking fees from a biotech giant that wants to research human embryonic stem cells, a nonprofit working to expand access to the morning after pill and a group pushing to study whether tightening gun control laws will reduce violence.

Huckabee opposes embryonic stem cell research, emergency contraception and stricter gun laws — all of which rank high on the list of deal-breakers for many of the religious conservatives whose support he’s ridden to the top of the Republican presidential field.

The payments — from drug-maker Novo Nordisk, which engages in stem cell research, the Public Health Institute, which works to expand access to morning after contraception and Grant Makers in Health, which is seeking to steer funding to studies of gun violence — highlight the delicate line Huckabee has walked on the profitable speaking circuit.

The former Arkansas governor has used appearances before churches, universities and other groups to both expand and capitalize on his reputation as a leader in conservative Christian and public health circles.

But along the way, he’s accepted honorariums from public health interests that sometimes support causes anathema to the GOP right.

Huckabee “isn’t afraid to speak to people who don’t agree with his message or personal philosophy,” said his spokeswoman, Kirsten Fedewa.

She added, though, that Huckabee sticks to “limited, focused and nonpolitical” topics such as “preventive health care or similar issues.”

That answer may not satisfy some social conservatives, said Bill Lauderback, executive vice president of the American Conservative Union.

“It raises questions as to his philosophical positions,” Lauderback asserted, “if he is accepting very lucrative speaking fees from special interest groups who have a markedly different perspective on certain social issues from what he is projecting as a candidate.”

The speaking and book circuits helped Huckabee, whose salary during his decade as governor never topped $79,000, make ends meet — both before and after he left the governor’s mansion early this year.

According to state and federal public records, he pulled in more than $405,000 since 2004 in honorariums, books sales, consulting and outside income through 12 Stops Inc., a company set up that year to manage his private sector business.

It’s not hard to see why his story appeals to groups and companies in the public health arena.

An ordained Baptist minister who dropped more than 100 pounds after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, Huckabee pushed to expand health care access and incentivize healthy living in Arkansas.

Novo Nordisk, which touts itself as a world leader in diabetes care, in May announced it was giving away 35,000 Spanish-language copies of Huckabee’s book, “Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork: A 12-Stop Program to End Bad Habits and Begin a Healthy Lifestyle.”

Two months earlier, Huckabee received a total of $35,000 in two payments from the company, according to a personal financial disclosure statement he filed with the Federal Election Commission.

On its website, the company calls human embryonic stem cell research “essential” to addressing diseases including diabetes and Parkinson’s.

But it adds it will only use human embryonic stem cells “derived from spare embryos from [in vitro fertilization] treatment that are obtained with freely given informed consent,” and it says it does not support “the creation of human embryos solely for research purposes.”

Huckabee is “opposed to research on embryonic stem cells,” according to his website.

Asked about the apparent contradiction, Novo Nordisk spokesman Sean Clements said the company and Huckabee “share the same passion for changing diabetes for the nearly 21 million Americans with the disease.”

The company’s connection to the research was too much for Republican candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who also opposes most embryonic stem cell research.

Unbeknownst to him, he had between $100,000 and $250,000 in stock in Novo Nordisk in a blind trust that was made public this summer.

At the time, Romney said the trust manager would “endeavor to make my investments conform to my positions.”

The California-based Public Health Institute, a nonprofit that paid Huckabee $13,000 for a January speech, works on a range of public health issues.

They include expanding access to emergency contraception — also known as the morning-after pill — in the U.S. and abroad.

The institute did not return telephone calls and e-mails. But its website asserts, “The best way to make change happen is to bring together people and institutions with common interests and, sometimes, different points of view.”

Huckabee this year received $4,000 from the D.C.-based nonprofit group, Grant Makers in Health. It helps foundations evaluate grant proposals in a range of areas, such as expanding health care access for immigrants, including illegal immigrants, and studying the impacts of gun-control laws on violence — hardly causes celebre among conservative activists.

Grant Makers did not respond to requests for comment.

Other entities that paid Huckabee seem more closely aligned with his world view.

He reported receiving nearly $11,000 from book sales and honorariums from five churches and from conservative Liberty University (Huckabee says he donated payments from the churches).

Castle Partners, a group that invests in health and fitness companies, paid him $15,000 to speak last year, while the Cooper Institute, an exercise research group on whose board Huckabee once sat, paid him more than $3,000 in honoraria and book sales.

The International Music Products Association, which this year gave the guitar-playing Huckabee its “Music for Life Award” for commitment to music education, also paid him $40,000 in consulting fees for a contract that ran through September.

As for book sales, the McBride Agency paid him nearly $150,000 in book royalties, while a political committee he controlled, Hope for America, paid him nearly $8,000 for books.

Henry Hyde died yesterday. I’m not going to say I miss the man. Like I said, I couldn’t come up with anything to say. I knew who Henry Hyde was in a vague way; he was somebody in government, he was anti-choice, he really didn’t like Bill Clinton. But reading all of what I did today really let me see how detrimental to choice, and women in general, this man was.

Everyone has fans, and man, did Hyde have fans.

“The pro-family movement lost one of its most passionate defenders of human life,” said James Dobson, head of the activist group Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “It is impossible to calculate how many millions of babies were spared because of his courageous work.”

He also happened to have a lot of opponents.

Hyde was one of the biggest opponents of late term abortions, but one has to wonder; how many late term abortions did he cause  with his “Hyde Amendment.”

But, overall, a lot of people just didn’t know who Hyde was and what he really stood for.  In talking to my friends today, I’d mention that Henry Hyde had died, and of the quarter that even knew who he was, none of them seemed to know what he’d stood for.  If you check out his wikipedia entry, there’s nearly no mention of what the ramifications of his ideas on abortion were.  For any of you out there, far more educated in this topic than I, please, edit judiciously.

And, required reading for all of you.  The Salon article on Hyde.

Below is an article from the Feminist Law Professors Blog, who are so much more eloquent than I ever can hope to be.

(Dis)honoring Henry Hyde

On November 5, President Bush will present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to, among others, Henry Hyde. (Hat tip to Prawfsblawg.) The official press release proclaims that Hyde “has served America with distinction” and has been a “powerful defender of life.”

In light of this award, I think it’s useful to recall the tremendous amount of harm Henry Hyde has inflicted on poor women over the past thirty years. In reproductive rights circles, Hyde’s name is synonymous with the provision of federal law that prohibits Medicaid from paying for abortions in all but the most extreme and rare circumstances. The provision has been in existence for thirty years now, which means for thirty years, Henry Hyde (and the rest of Congress that has gone along with him and/or taken up his cause since his retirement) has forced poor women to delay abortions, to use money for other necessities like food or shelter to pay for abortions, or to carry to term and have unwanted children.

The always useful Guttmacher Institute has a good article that reviews the history and impact of the Hyde Amendment. Some lowlights:

The current version of the Hyde Amendment, established in 1997, allows federal funding for abortion in cases of rape and incest, as well as life endangerment, but tightens the life exception to permit payment only when the woman’s life is threatened by “physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.”

At the state level, 17 states currently have a policy to use their own funds to pay for all or most medically necessary abortions sought by Medicaid recipients.

[O]ver the years, Congress has enacted legislation essentially banning abortion funding for other large groups of Americans dependent on the federal government for their health care or health insurance, ranging from federal employees and military personnel to women in federal prisons and low-income residents of the District of Columbia.

Poor women take up to three weeks longer than other women to obtain an abortion. Little wonder that, according to a 2004 Guttmacher study published in Contraception, 67% of poor women having an abortion say they would have preferred to have had the abortion earlier [when abortions are safer and less costly].

[P]oor women who are able to raise the money needed for an abortion often do so at great sacrifice to themselves and their families. Studies indicate that many such women are forced to divert money meant for rent, utility bills, food or clothing for themselves and their children.

Studies published over the course of two decades looking at a number of states concluded that 18–35% of women who would have had an abortion continued their pregnancies after Medicaid funding was cut off.

In short, the amount of pain and misery Henry Hyde has inflicted on this nation’s women is immeasurably large.

- David S. Cohen

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1689008,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20071129/pl_bloomberg/a547whfknuto_1

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/10/1/gpr100112.html

This is, shall we say, not cool at all.  Come on, people, step it up!  We have the right to Plan B – let us have it!

Court: Druggists May Deny Emergency Pill

By CURT WOODWARD – Nov 8, 2007

SEATTLE (AP) — A federal judge has suspended Washington state’s requirement that pharmacists sell “morning-after” birth control pills, a victory for druggists who claim their moral objections to the drug are being bulldozed by the government.

In an injunction signed Thursday, U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton said pharmacists can refuse to sell the morning-after pill if they refer the customer to another nearby source. Pharmacists’ employers also are protected by the order.

The emergency contraception sold as Plan B is a high dose of a drug found in many regular birth-control pills. It can dramatically lower the risk of pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.

Critics consider the pill tantamount to abortion, although it is different from the abortion pill RU-486 and has no effect on women who already are pregnant.

Under pressure from Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire, state regulators this year ruled that druggists couldn’t withhold any prescription because of their personal objections.

Two pharmacists and a drugstore owner sued the state in July over the new rule, saying it violates their civil rights. They asked the judge to halt forced Plan B sales while the lawsuit is in play.

“On the issue of free exercise of religion alone, the evidence before the court convinces it that plaintiffs … have demonstrated both a likelihood of success on the merits and the possibility of irreparable injury,” Leighton wrote.

The injunction effectively sets up a so-called “refuse and refer” system, allowing pharmacists who personally oppose Plan B to send customers to another pharmacy.

Women’s groups, abortion-rights advocates and Gregoire have opposed that approach, saying women who seek emergency contraception must get the pills as quickly as possible for them to work.

Kristen Waggoner, an attorney for the pharmacists and drug store owner, said, “We believe strongly that forcing someone to choose between their religious beliefs and actually losing their business or their career is unconstitutional.”

Plan B’s manufacturer, Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc., last year got approval to sell the drug without a prescription to women 18 and older.

Several states have enacted laws to improve rape survivors’ access to the medication in hospital emergency rooms. Some states also have laws that protect pharmacy employees who refuse to sell the contraceptive for reasons of conscience.

However, now there’s a way to get Plan B online. Drugstore.com carries it, and women 18 and older can buy it there. Remember, shipping may not always get it to you on time. So why not order a pack, just to have it in your medicine cabinet for when there is an emergency?

No embarrassment, you don’t have to talk to a pharmacist, and if you order more than $49 of stuff, you can get free shipping.

EC is available at most women’s health centers across the country, but in some states those are few and far between. These pharmacies promising to stock Plan B means that more women across the country will have access to EC, without discrimination.

Every pharmacy that agrees to stock Plan B agrees that it will be available to women 18 or over without discrimination, judgment, or delay. It also guarantees that women under the age of 18 will be able to get it, with prescription, from these places.

If your local pharmacy doesn’t stock Plan B, encourage them to do so, and at the very least make sure the pharmacy has a recommendation of a store that a woman can go to to get Plan B that is practical and easy to reach.

If you live in a large urban area, it might not seem like a big deal – if one pharmacy doesn’t have it, you can go to another. But for women who live in rural areas, where there might not be more than one pharmacy, it’s important that those women are able to get it, too

Remember – this is your right. Fight for it.

If you live in Westchester County, please download the Pro Choice 2007 voting guide. The guide helps you to make informed decisions about who is pro-choice in local elections.