Good news on abortion.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Oregonians on both sides of the abortion debate should pause for a moment to congratulate each other. Oregon's abortion rate has dropped every year since 1999, and in the five years from 1999 to 2004, it fell 19 percent.

Pro- and anti-abortion advocates share credit for the decline.

Take a bow, Planned Parenthood, for your important efforts to promote comprehensive sex education in schools, increase access to birth control, provide better contraceptive methods and make emergency contraception available for women throughout the state.

And let's hear it for Oregon Right to Life, whose outreach to teenage girls and efforts to educate women about alternatives to abortion have contributed to the steady decline in Oregon's abortion rate.

Finally, a round of applause for the churches and faith-based organizations that champion abstinence as the best approach to lowering teen pregnancy rates and reducing the need for abortions.

Who's doing a better job? Who cares? The important thing to acknowledge is that any effort that helps reduce unplanned pregnancy reduces abortions.

Reducing unplanned pregnancy ought to be a rallying point for all reasonable people, no matter where their beliefs fall on the abortion rights continuum. Such efforts have the greatest impact when they're targeted at teenagers.

To that end, all forms of sex education can play a role, including programs that focus on abstinence, with this important caveat: It's entirely appropriate to teach abstinence as the first and best choice in a comprehensive sex education program.

But teaching abstinence without also covering contraception is like teaching skydiving without mentioning the emergency parachute. "The main chute will always open, kids. That's all you need to know." Except, sometimes the main chute doesn't open, and sometimes teenagers don't abstain.

Abstinence and contraception are crucial strategies, but all women of childbearing age need a safety net: emergency contraception. Known commercially as Plan B, emergency contraception is essentially an extra-strength birth control pill. It must be taken in two doses, the first within 72 hours after intercourse, followed by another tablet 12 hours later.

Taken as directed, Plan B is highly effective at preventing pregnancy resulting from contraceptive failure or unprotected sex. It's also one of the safest drugs ever tested in the United States.

Unfortunately, the Food and Drug Administration's politically motivated refusal to allow over-the-counter access to Plan B continues to cause countless unplanned pregnancies to end in abortion. With no end in sight to the FDA's indefensible obstructionism, Oregon should follow the lead of other states that have passed legislation allowing nonprescription access to Plan B.

Doing so would ensure a continuation of the welcome decline in Oregon's abortion rate, and as a result, ought to have support from pro- and anti-abortion advocates alike.