Overseas U.S. Military Facilities To Begin Stocking Emergency Contraception

Defense Department officials on Thursday announced that emergency contraception will be available at all military hospitals and health clinics around the world, the Washington Post reports. The decision was made on Feb. 3 after the Pentagon accepted a recommendation from its Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, which voted in November 2009 to include the brand-name EC pill Plan B and the generic Next Choice on the list of drugs that all military facilities should stock, according to a DOD spokesperson.

The same panel made a similar recommendation in 2002, but the policy was never put in place, the Post reports. According to the Post, the decision marks the Obama administration's latest reversal of a Bush administration women's health policy. The Obama administration previously lifted restrictions on federal funding for international family planning groups; proposed the recission of a federal regulation that would have expanded the ability of health care workers to refuse care based on moral or religious objections; and eased federal restrictions on embryonic stem cell research (Stein, Washington Post, 2/5). DOD spokesperson Cynthia Smith said she did not know when the new EC policy would be implemented (Hefling, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, 2/4).

Nancy Keenan of NARAL Pro-Choice America said the decision could affect more than 350,000 women serving in the military. "It's a tragedy that women in uniform have been denied such basic health care," Keenan said in a statement, adding, "We applaud the medical experts for standing up for military women."

EC consists of higher doses of a hormone found in standard birth control pills. Plan B and Next Choice can prevent pregnancy when taken up to 72 hours after sex, the Post reports (Washington Post, 2/5).


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