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Reps. want emergency contraceptives on base

Availability of emergency contraceptives at military hospitals and clinics is one of the issues the House Armed Services Committee will fight about when it works on the 2008 defense authorization bill.

Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine, reintroduced legislation Thursday requiring emergency contraception to be available at all military health care facilities.

His bill, HR 2064, reopens a debate over a 2002 Defense Department decision to remove emergency contraceptives from the basic stockpile of drugs kept at pharmacies only one month after they were made available. As a result, a woman eligible for military health care who wants the so-called “morning after” pill must go off-base to get the drug.

Defense officials did not respond to questions about the availability of emergency contraceptives, including why they were pulled from the so-called drug formulary five years ago.

There will be an opportunity over the next two weeks to try to get the legislation attached to the 2008 defense authorization bill as the House Armed Services Committee begins writing the annual policy bill. Michaud is not a member of the committee, but three of the bill’s co-sponsors — Reps. Susan Davis, D-Calif.; Tim Ryan, D-Ohio; and Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif. — are armed services committee members and as such can offer the language as an amendment to the defense bill.

Emergency contraceptives are widely available in the private sector at pharmacies and public health clinics, although there has been some controversy when individual pharmacists have refused to fill prescriptions on moral grounds.

Michaud and his supporters, including major medical groups like the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Public Health Association, support making emergency contraception more easily available, especially to women who could be the victims of sexual assault or rape.

Michaud and Ryan, the two chief sponsors of the bill, launched their effort to change military policy after a 2003 study found 30 percent of military women said they have been the victims of rape or a rape attempt, and after the Defense Department saw a 40 percent increase in the number of reported sexual assault cases in just one year.