What happened to derail Plan B? When Politics Defeats Science

Important questions, reminders and reality-check today in the WaPo from Susan F. Wood, a former assistant commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and senior policy adviser to the Reproductive Health Technologies Project.

It's been nearly three years since the first application came in to make Plan B emergency contraception available over the counter, so that women, including rape victims, could have a second chance to prevent an unintended pregnancy and the need for an abortion. How many chances have we missed? I still can't explain what is going on here, and why women 17 and older are still denied this product in a timely way. When did adult access to contraception become controversial? And why have we allowed it to happen?

Wood's entire WaPo column here.



On a related note -- reflecting upon many of the big questions and concerns of our day as artists are wont to do -- maybe we can again look to the arts and to some of those artists to help us see more clearly what we know, feel, experience. A WaPo review(?) of the Whitney Biennial is entitled "Red, White and Bleak" subtitled Grim Reflections on the Dispirit of the Times.

When even the pompous, wouldn't-know-about- working-class-life-or-poverty-if-it-bit-him-in-the-ass George Will continues an increasingly adamant litany in his recent string of critiques directed at the most right-wing administration ever, you know they're in trouble. "Rhetoric of Unreality" is his column today.