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By Root 304 0

to the attempt to confuse EC with abortion, the other big lie being told about EC is that—like birth control—it will make you whorish. Especially if you’re a teen girl. (Seems like anything will set us off on a fucking rampage, huh?) In fact, that’s the main reason that EC isn’t available without a prescription. The FDA stalled for years on giving EC over-the-counter status, using young women and their potential sluttiness as the excuse. They only (grudgingly) okayed it for over-the-counter sale in 2006, and even now it’s only available to women over eighteen years old—leaving out the women who perhaps need it the most: young women. I speak from personal experience when I tell you that EC is definitely not something that makes you particularly horny. When I was seventeen years old, I took it and felt sick to my stomach all day afterward.

Male contraceptives are on the way! different kinds of pills (one hormonal, one not) and an IVD (similar to women’s (UD) are being tested for release.

In a 2006 investigation into the FDA’s inappropriate lack of action on EC, a memo was found that shows just how insane the government has become over sex and young women. An FDA doctor said in the 2004 memo that one of the FDA heads, Dr. Janet Woodcock, expressed concern over EC and said that the FDA “could not anticipate or prevent extreme promiscuous behaviors, such as the medication taking on an ‘urban legend’ status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of [EC].”4

Teen sex cults? Sounds like a bad made-for-TV movie. I can see it now. Meredith Baxter Birney in The Morning After. “She thought her daughter was just ‘spending time with friends.’ Little did she know that Amy was just another teen dragged into the seedy world of teen sex cults.”

But as ridiculous as this sounds, this really is the reason that women don’t have access to a safe, legal form of contraception.

Even when the American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement in 2005 supporting over-the-counter access to EC (for adults and teens) and debunked the myth of EC causing promiscuity, the FDA continued to ignore the facts.

The FDA has also said that its stalling for over-the-counter status of EC really is a genuine concern for the health of teen girls, who might not take the drug properly. If that’s the case, then why is it that a new diet pill—fat-blocking Orlistat—is on its way to over-the-counter approval? Experts voiced concerns over the possibility of teens abusing the drug and Orlistat’s side effects, which include “fecal incontinence, gas, and oily discharge.” Answer: They’d rather approve a diet pill that makes you shit your pants than a form of birth control. Politics are trumping science and safety. To this day, the agency refuses to admit that it won’t approve EC simply because of anti-sex politics.

But perhaps the most distressing aspect of the EC madness is that women who need the drug most—rape victims—are being systematically denied it. Women who are sexually assaulted need easy access to EC perhaps more than anyone. These women are in an already-vulnerable position. But again, the anti-sexers don’t have any sympathy for that kind of nonsense. (Rape? Pshaw.)

In 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice created the first-ever federal guidelines for treating sexual assault victims—but without any mention of EC, which is a standard precautionary measure after a rape. So basically, they created a national model for treating rape victims that states and local groups will look to when creating theirs. EC was deliberately left out of the guidelines and still isn’t mentioned today—even though ninety-seven members of Congress urged the Justice Department to put it in there.

The truth is, even if EC were mentioned in the guidelines, there’s no guarantee that rape survivors would be told about it. More and more reports are coming out that say hospitals are frequently remiss in their responsibility to tell rape victims about EC. Many Catholic hospitals even refuse to stock the drug, despite laws that tell them they