Access to emergency contraception will reduce the incidence of unintended pregnancy.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s ruling last month to make emergency contraception, known as Plan B, available at the counter of pharmacies capped a decade-long campaign by family planning providers and women’s advocacy groups to make post-coital contraception available to women who have experienced contraceptive failure and are facing a potential unplanned pregnancy.

The public health virtues of making emergency contraception as widely available as possible can be summed up as follows: It is a scientific fact that unfettered access to emergency contraception will reduce the incidence of unintended pregnancy. And, it is a scientific fact that reducing the incidence of unintended pregnancy reduces the incidence of abortion.

One would think that this simple cause-and-effect formula, whose sum is the reduction of the number of abortions, performed here in Maine and nationally, would lead anti-abortion advocates to find common purpose with pro-family planning supporters. Sadly, it has been the very same anti-abortion advocates who have erected every imaginable roadblock to prevent access to Plan B.

The path to the FDA’s limited approval of Plan B is littered with public health casualties at the national level and political miscalculations here in Maine.

Most notable at the national level was Dr. Susan Wood, who was chief of women’s health at the FDA until she resigned in 2005 over the FDA’s refusal to allow emergency contraception to be sold over-the-counter in spite of “scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended by the professional staff.”

Here in Maine, the Legislature supported greater access to emergency contraception in 2004, when “An Act to Authorize Collaborative Practice Agreements for Emergency Contraception” was signed into law. This law allows pharmacists to dispense Plan B at-the-counter for women who face a potential unplanned pregnancy. Despite strong bipartisan legislative support for collaborative practice agreements, gubernatorial candidate Chandler Woodcock voted against it.

In the last 18 months, due to a generous grant from the Maine Health Access Foundation, more than 300 Maine pharmacists have been trained to provide emergency contraception. And nearly one-third of them have entered into collaborative practice agreements with local health care providers.

Although the FDA approved Plan B sales over-the-counter, it played politics to the end, satisfying the religious right by restricting over-the-counter access to women 18 and older and requiring those who are 17 and younger to get a prescription first. If Maine were left to rely on FDA guidelines, the group most vulnerable to unintended pregnancy – teens 17 and younger – would have access to Plan B only if they could schedule an appointment with their health care provider, assuming they have one, and they’d have to do so in the 72-hour period when emergency contraception is most effective.

This restriction has been the subject of widespread misunderstanding in Maine. It has been reported that the FDA prohibition on 17-year-old access to at-the-counter Plan B applies to Maine teens. It does not.

Maine’s collaborative practice agreement law makes it possible for teens 17 and younger to access Plan B from any one of Maine Family Planning’s 45 clinical sites or from one of the 92 pharmacists employed by 40 pharmacies throughout the state.

By making Plan B available without the FDA barriers, the number of unintended pregnancies and, thus, the need for abortion will be drastically reduced. Current data suggests that the need for abortion could be reduced by half if Plan B were made widely available.

The Maine Legislature and the state’s governor, Republicans, Democrats and independents have a rich and distinguished history when it comes to putting the health of Maine women ahead of the transparent political games being played in Washington, D.C. The passage and implementation of the collaborative practice agreement for emergency contraception law is just the latest in a long line of examples.

However, as we enter the final lap of this year’s election cycle, Maine voters need to ask candidates for political office, including those vying for the Blaine House, whether they support the laws and policies that make it possible for Maine women to control their reproductive future.

Or are they simply the servants of a reactionary ideology that subordinates women’s health to political expediency?

George A. Hill is the executive director of the Family Planning Action Fund of Maine.