Wal-Mart Goes to Plan B

For some reason, Wal-Mart was only carrying the so-called “morning-after pill” in pharmacies in two states. Prior to losing an administrative action in Massachusetts, the nation’s largest retailer had dispensed the contraceptive only in its Illinois pharmacies. Now, apparently, the need to carry it in Massachusetts was enough for Wal-Mart to decide to carry it in all of its stores around the nation.

I simply don’t understand what all the fuss is about this pill. Wal-Mart was carrying standard birth control pills around the country before this. This “plan B” contraceptive is just that — a contraceptive. It is basically a double- or triple-dose birth control pill which causes an as-yet unfertilized ovum to reject sperm, and the uterine walls to sluff off a fertilized egg, preventing such an egg from becoming viable. It does not induce an abortion of a viable fertilized human ovum. It is not an “abortion pill.” That pill exists, but that’s not what we’re talking about. This should be no more controversial than selling condoms.

I could go off on a rant here, but I won’t. The point is, there is a lot of misunderstanding about what science is and what medicine can do. Ultimately, that misunderstanding is based on emotional and not reasonable factors. So it doesn’t matter that these pills are not “abortion pills.” I can’t get too upset at people saying “that’s morally wrong” when it’s a heartfelt belief — although that doesn’t mean I agree with their conclusion, of course.

What I can get upset about, and am, is the amazing success of the leaders of these emotionally-driven people. By calling this contraceptive the “morning-after pill,” they have managed to a) make it sound like an abortion pill, when it is not, b) suggest that young women across the country are going to start having sex when they otherwise would not have because this pill exists, and c) imply that women having sex at all is a morally bad thing to do. What if a married couple wants this pill? Nothing wrong with a married couple having sex, right? Whoever it was who thought of calling this the “morning-after pill” was an evil genius of political marketing. Seven years after it was approved for use by the FDA, it only now is being dispensed by the nation’s fifth-largest pharmacy.

And the motive behind Wal-Mart’s amazing act of foot-dragging was a particular interpretation of Christian doctrine — an interpretation that is not shared by all Christians and of course ignores the fact that some of Wal-Mart’s customers are not Christians at all. Or perhaps it was fear — fear inspired by the same cynical leaders who knew better but found political purchase by mischaracterizing the science behind something new that people might have wanted access to. That’s conservatism at its worst — blind, automatic, unthinking, pig-headed, reactionary resistance to anything different than oneself.

So I say, this has been a long time coming. It’s a pill. It’s not an abortion. Wal-Mart sells condoms. It sells regular birth control pills. It should have been selling “plan B” pills all along, and I suppose it’s incumbent upon me, given that attitude, to congratulate Wal-Mart for taking another step towards entering the twentieth century. …And yes, I know what century it is.

Hopefully, the good folks in Bentonville will soon successfully face a new challenge: leaving the Lochner era behind and actually complying with labor regulations laws.