Plan B finally for sale.

Byline: The Register-Guard

At $40 a pop for a two-pill dose, the Plan B emergency contraceptive is a bargain compared with the cost of a pregnancy or an abortion. Now that it's available at pharmacies without a prescription for women 18 or older, Plan B can begin saving Oregon women a whole lot more than money.

But it won't be much help unless women are made aware that - at long last - it's finally for sale. Once that word gets out, the next step is to make sure the packages are easy to spot on pharmacy counters.

It may take some time for women to learn about and become comfortable with emergency contraception, largely because it got unfairly tangled up in abortion politics. Abortion opponents continue to misrepresent how Plan B works and to use outright deception concerning its safety.

Food and Drug Administration researchers say Plan B, which is essentially a high-potency birth control pill, is one of the safest drugs ever tested.

Like the standard birth control pills to which it is chemically similar, Plan B works by suppressing ovulation or preventing fertilization. It has no effect on a fertilized egg that has implanted in the uterus.

But that didn't stop abortion opponents from falsely linking Plan B with abortion pills such as mifepristone, which will terminate a pregnancy. The Bush administration and conservative Republicans in Congress were willing accomplices and did everything in their power to try to block nonprescription access to Plan B.

The stonewalling began in 2003 after three separate Food and Drug Administration offices overwhelmingly recommended approval of Barr Laboratories' application to sell Plan B over the counter.

But 49 congressional puritans sent acting FDA Commissioner Steven Galson a letter in 2004 outlining their fears of wanton teenage promiscuity if Plan B were to be sold without a prescription. Galson then took the unusual step of overruling his own experts and ordering more research.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists labeled Galson's decision a "tragedy for American women."

The tragedy continued all the way until last August, when it became clear to the White House that the Senate wasn't going to approve President Bush's nominee to head the FDA unless the agency stopped stalling its approval of Plan B.

The bitter irony of the whole Plan B charade is that the minute it was approved for nonprescription sale, a real tool to reduce the abortion rate entered the marketplace.

Almost half of all Oregon pregnancies are unintended, and about 40 percent of those unplanned pregnancies end in abortion, according to the state Department of Human Services. Preventing unplanned pregnancies is one of the most effective ways to reduce the number of abortions.

Nationwide, over-the-counter access to Plan B is expected eventually to prevent up to 1.5 million unintended pregnancies and 800,000 abortions a year. If taken within 24 hours to 72 hours of unprotected intercourse, it can reduce the risk of pregnancy by as much as 89 percent.

Some women report having had had trouble finding Plan B at their local pharmacies in the Eugene-Springfield area. That should stop happening now that the newness has worn off and pharmacists understand how important this new drug can be to the health of their women customers - "customers" being the key word here.

Making Plan B easy to find is good business.