Plan B Grrlcot by Tobi Vail (‘06)
another from the archives, this is from 2006 the struggle continues:
I take Storeman’s refusal to stock Plan B personally—I’ve used Plan B…and frankly I have spent thousands of dollars there…and they think I’m a slut.
-Janet Blanding, Plan B Oly
Olympia resident Janet Blanding was outraged when she discovered that the pharmacy in Ralph’s Thriftway, a local grocery store, doesn’t carry Plan B, also known as Emergency Contraception (EC) or the Morning After Pill. It is a legal form of birth control that is taken orally after unprotected sexual intercourse or rape occurs. After discussing the matter with Ralph’s owner Ken Storman, Blanding alerted the community, called a meeting and quickly formed Plan B Oly, a group who organized a boycott of Storman’s owned Thriftways, Ralph’s and Bayview.
As Blanding explains in an article she wrote for Works in Progress (WIP), a local monthly, timely access to Plan B is particularly important because of the nature of how the drug works. The medication is most effective when taken immediately after sex. The longer a woman waits, the chance that she may become pregnant increases. Although, theoretically, Plan B is available from other pharmacies in Olympia, there is no guarantee they will have it in stock, and transportation can be an issue, especially for poor, dependent and/or disabled women. In addition to these barriers, as of today, Plan B still requires a prescription from a doctor. (This will change in the near future, according to a recent Pharmacy Board ruling.)
Local news coverage of the boycott reports Storman’s refusal to stock Plan B is based “on moral grounds”. The Olympian quotes Ken Storman as saying “I just think people have to choose when they believe life begins. There are questions about this drug on that issue.” (Shannon) Elaborating on his stance in a more recent Olympian article, Storman asserts,”If you take the position that life begins at a fertilized egg, then stopping that fertilized egg from implanting is problematic.”This is misleading. While it is true that different ideas about ‘when life begins can create moral dilemmas for those who believe abortion is murder, according to the FDA; Plan B is birth control, not an abortion pill.
Significantly, although the Olympian reports it as if it is a fact in several places in many different articles, the claim that Plan B stops an already fertilized egg from implanting in the womb, the medical definition of a pregnancy, has not been established as a scientific fact. (Rivera 1263) In contrasting the FDA’s explanation of how Plan B works, with the Olympian’s description, a subtle, but very important distinction emerges. According to the FDA:
Plan B works like other birth control pills to prevent pregnancy. Plan B acts primarily by stopping the release of an egg from the ovary (ovulation). It may prevent the union of sperm and egg (fertilization). If fertilization does occur, Plan B may prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb (implantation). If a fertilized egg is implanted prior to taking Plan B, Plan B will not work.
The key work here is “may”. Compare this definition, with the Olympian’s description of how Plan B works:
The drug can prevent an egg from being released, prevent its fertilization, or prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb.
In the FDA’s definition, the explanation given claims Plan B mainly works by preventing ovulation, adding that it may work in other ways too. In the Olympian article the word ‘can’ is used instead of ‘may’ and it is not clear Plan B generally works by preventing ovulation. In addition to this subtle yet significant discrepancy, the Olympian article prefaces Storman’s above quote with a summary of his position that further confuses the issue; “To the Stormans, Plan B is a troubling drug because it can stop a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman’s womb, a necessary step in pregnancy.”(Wilson)
Clearly, the Olympian is saying this is Storman’s position and not their own, but the first part of the sentence seems like an opinion, while the second half reads as a fact. By repeatedly focusing on the possibility that Plan B may work by preventing implantation while suppressing the accepted medical fact that it mainly works by preventing ovulation, science is being framed by pro-life ideology in our local newspaper.
The pro-life movement may, through repetition, hope to convince us that contraception is abortion. (Page 21)
I became aware of the complexities surrounding this issue by reading How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America by Cristina Page, which argues that the American pro-life movement is largely anti-birth control. My analysis is directly informed by her work. She sees the conflict between the pro-choice and pro-life movements as being based on a ‘culture war’ surrounding sex and gender roles. In the pro-life view, sex is reserved for pro-creation and women should stay home and raise children. In the pro-choice view, sex can have many functions and women should be able to determine their own fate. As a result, reproductive choice, including access to birth control, is tied to warring constructs of femininity.
Using Cynthia Enloe’s idea that the “personal is global”, what happens when these ideas about femininity get exported? In 2002, Bush withheld $34 billion dollars from the UNFPA, an organization that helps women in poor countries gain access to birth control. According to one report, this money could have prevented 5 million abortions and 400,000 pregnancy related deaths. (Page 205) In large parts of the world, access to birth control is a matter of life and death, due to high infant mortality rates and maternity deaths. Organizations like the UNFPA depend on donations from the US to keep women alive.
Using Senate committee testimony and extensive research, Page documents a direct connection between Bush’s decision to freeze the UNFPA funding and an American pro-life organization called the Population Research Institute (PRI), which is a branch of the Catholic organization Human Life International (HLI). According to Page, the PRI had been trying to get the Pro-life Caucus in Congress to stop funding the UNFPA for several years:
PRI had just six staffers—yet aligning itself with its pro-life brethren, and a pro-life president, it wielded enormous political power. This tiny group reversed elements of U.S. foreign policy. ( Page 128)
Page’s extensive examination of the PRI and the HFI demonstrates that the leaders of both organizations shared pro-life ideas about femininity. The president of HFI sees birth control as a hindrance to woman’s natural state, while the president of PRI sees a negative connection between sex education, birth control and freedom, claiming that access to both will produce assertive women who may run for office or start a business. In this view, access to birth control gives women power, which violates the code of patriarchal femininity. (Page 143-44)
As extremely influential special-interest groups export American pro-life ideology about femininity through official US government policy and actions, Olympians continue to boycott Ralph’s Thriftway, challenging pro-life convictions about women locally. According to Janet Blanding, the Storemans are losing at least $65,000 per month but show no signs of changing their policy. 19 women have filed complaints with the Washington State Pharmacy Board. At this time Plan B Oly is focusing on local and national issues but is lacking an international analyses. Blanding has recently uncovered direct links between Ken Storman and the pro-life movement.
What can American feminists do to secure reproductive freedom at the global level? How are our local struggles for access to birth control connected to the fact that our government is directly responsible for large numbers of poor women around the world being denied their basic healthcare needs? As American citizens what can we do?
As Cynthia Enloe exhaustively demonstrates in her book, Bananas, Beaches and Bases, there is global inequality between women. In this case, American women and women in the global south are being denied access to birth control to varying degrees. Because of the economic conditions created by globalization, this affects women in poor countries disproportionately.
How can American feminists fighting for access to birth control build solidarity with women worldwide and incorporate a race and class analysis into our movements at home and abroad? We need to explore this question. It is clear that movements for reproductive rights need to further investigate and challenge the pro-life organizations that are backing the Bush Administration’s policies locally and globally. As American citizens who oppose our government’s stance on reproductive freedom we have a responsibility to connect the global struggle for access to birth control with our own local struggle.
Urging Americans to resist the Iraq war in her speech, “Instant Mix Imperial Democracy”, Arundhati Roy tells us:
The only institution as strong as the American government is American civilsociety. The rest of us are slaves of slave nations. We are by no means powerless but you have the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor’s chambers. (Roy 67)
As we continue to picket Ralph’s in the rain we should be aware of the power we have to influence public policy, not forgetting that women in poor countries are dying as a result of our government’s policy on reproductive rights. The struggle for access to birth control is both a local and global one.
Works Cited
Blanding, Janet. “Who Gets to Decide What Form of Birth Control a Woman Uses?”
Works in Progress. June 2006. 6 Oct 2006. http://www.olywip.org/wip/node/37
Blanding, Janet “What Are You Paying For Besides Food When You Shop at Ralphs?”
Works in Progress. July 2006. 6 Oct 2006. http://www.olywip.org/wip/node/19
Enloe, Cythnia. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Sense of International Politics.
Berkeley: UC Press, 1990.
Page, Cristina. How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America. New York: Basic, 2006.
Plan B Oly. 2006 Plan B Oly. 6 Oct. 2006. http://www.planboly.org.
Rivera, Roberto, MD, Irene Yocobson, MD, and David Grimes.
“The Mechanism of Action of Hormonal Contraceptives and Intrauterine Contraceptive Devices,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 181 (1999): 1263-1269.
Shannon, Brad. “Boycott Brews over Grocer’s Plan B Stand.”
United Nations Population Fund. 2006 UNFPA. 06 Oct 2006. http://www.unfpa.org
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 2006. Food and Drug
Administration. 06 Oct. 2006 http://www.fda.gov/.
Wilson, Adam. “Market Owner Resists Call to Carry Plan B
Pill” 29 June 2006. 6 Oct.2006 http://www.theolympian.com/search
3 years ago