Sandra Fluke, Georgetown University Law Students for Reproductive Justice

This blog is part of the #HERvotes blog carnival.

As you may have recently read in the New York Times, although Georgetown’s student health insurance doesn’t cover contraception, it does cover birth control pills when they’re prescribed for medical reasons other than preventing pregnancy (e.g. severe acne, mood disorders, etc.).  This is called the “over-ride” process because it over-rides the usual ban on contraceptive coverage.  Unfortunately, this over-ride process is terribly flawed and fails many women at Georgetown.  The problems with this process illustrate the consequences for women’s health when university administrators dictate which reasons for a birth control prescription are the “right” reasons.

Because of an obsession with preventing students from fraudulently using the over-ride to get contraception coverage for the “wrong” reason (preventing pregnancy), students who attempt to use the over-ride process are sometimes subjected to questioning and accusations that they are lying about their qualifying medical needs.  This is followed with long delays and bureaucratic barriers that don’t exist for any other prescription covered by Georgetown’s insurance.  The Times profiled how Georgetown’s policy resulted in a medical tragedy for one woman.  In response a Georgetown spokeswoman said that:

problems like this were rare and that doctors at the health service knew how to help students get coverage for contraceptives needed for medical reasons.

If only that were true!  Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice actually surveyed students at the law school about this.  For some students, the over-ride process works adequately, but 65% of students attempting to utilize the over-ride process reported being subjected to extensive questioning, inordinate clerical issues, extensive delays, or other complications because of disbelief from doctors and insurance administrators.  20% either never received their medication or were never reimbursed by the insurance company.  Here are the experiences of just a few students:

I was without birth control for many months because of problems with the over-ride.  I spoke with people at [the student health] clinic, the Georgetown main insurance office, the insurance company, the drug insurance company, and a pharmacy.  I was put on hold multiple times and had to call some of these people multiple times.  After investing at least ten hours in the process, I gave up. . . .

Simply because I am sexually active, the doctor assumed I was lying even though I have medical needs.  I struggled with getting an over-ride because the doctor was hesitant even though I reported severe pain and mood changes that affect my functioning as a student. . . .

[M]y OB/GYN suspects that I have endometriosis and I took a specific pill to help control it.  Endometriosis cannot be definitively diagnosed without surgery, and obtaining a waiver was stressful and time consuming.  It unnecessarily distracted me from my classes. . . .

I have found the health care coverage ban on birth control embarrassing and potentially harmful.  When scheduling a yearly gynecological exam, I was subject to a line of hostile questioning twice: once by the person scheduling the exam and once by the doctor performing the exam.  The questions included queries about my sexual history, which seems appropriate for the doctor to ask about, but not the scheduler.  A yearly gynecological exam is a recommended procedure and may not even be tied to a birth control prescription.  Georgetown’s refusal to cover birth control creates a potential burden on a woman getting this exam at all. . . .

Tragically, Georgetown’s policy has also created rampant misinformation regarding student insurance coverage of women’s reproductive healthcare generally, leading to some students foregoing essential medical care:

[I] was intimidated by the [‘override’] process and thus I did forego OBGYN care for over a year.  More importantly, the reputation that Georgetown has as being . . . unsupportive of women’s reproductive health prevented me from seeking out STD testing after I was sexually assaulted.  (I assumed [Georgetown] would not cover my HIV/STD testing because when I was tested last year at my provider’s office . . . as part of a regular/routine exam, I paid $500 due to lack of coverage.  It was not until several months after I was assaulted that I found out . . . that [Georgetown] would cover such tests.  In general, there is a problematic lack of info about women’s health coverage on campus.  I did not even know I could get an OBGYN exam at the law center until a friend told me my 2L year.  While I support Georgetown’s Jesuit identity and am a person of faith myself, I find our school’s policy to be . . . harmful to students. . . .

I’d say “harmful to students” is putting it lightly.  That’s why we’re so thankful that the new Affordable Care Act regulations will protect vulnerable students and end these types of dangerous insurance policies!

Emily T. Wolf, Vice-President, Fordham Law Students for Reproductive Justice

This blog is part of the #HERvotes blog carnival.

Fordham University is a Jesuit school.  Because of this, students are not able to get birth control prescribed to them at the on-campus health centers.  Fordham LSRJ wanted to provide Fordham students with a way to have access to doctors and birth control prescriptions.  Here’s how we did it:

Step One:  Identify a Specific Problem

The problem that we chose to tackle was the fact that there was no notice on the health center’s website that students would not be able to receive standard health care.  There was no information that stated the health center is not able to prescribe birth control.  Under the heading “Women’s Health,” the site stated, “routine gynecological exams are available.”  If you searched further, you would find a question under the FAQs about scheduling a gynecological exam with some additional language:

“Remember, Fordham University is a Catholic and Jesuit University. As such, the physicians, nurse practitioners, and staff of the Health Center abide by the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.  Those interested in these directives can read them, usccb.org/about/doctrine/ethical-and-religious-directives/ (You will leave this website.)”

If you follow that link, you will need to click on the 43 page document, and read it.  If you do a search for “contraception,” “birth control,” or “condom,” you will find zero matches within the document.  If you search for “contraceptive,” you will find three matches, including text that states, “Catholic health institutions may not promote or condone contraceptive practices but should provide, for married couples and the medical staff who counsel them, instruction both about the Church’s teaching on responsible parenthood and in methods of natural family planning.”

This was sufficiently vague and hidden such that students were not likely to be aware of this practice.  It does not state that Fordham University forbids its nurse practitioners from prescribing birth control at its on-campus health centers.  It is especially confusing given other language on the website that explains the health insurance offered by Fordham is required by New York law to cover birth control prescriptions.  So students who need birth control will need to go to a different health care provider and incur additional costs.

Fordham LSRJ spoke to the Director of Student Health Services at Fordham, who explained that there is a medical exception to these birth control directives.  So, theoretically, students who have health reasons for which birth control is standard treatment should be able to get a birth control prescription.  However, this is not the case.  We have information from many students who went to the health center with documented medical reasons to be on prescription contraceptives (endometriosis, ovarian cysts, dysmenorrhea) and were denied birth control.  We have not heard from any student who was prescribed hormonal contraceptives for any reason.

Step Two:  Identify Solutions

Our first solution was to ask the health center to update the website to reflect that students could not receive birth control prescriptions at Fordham.  This sounded easy and entirely reasonable!  We thought that it was a simple oversight on Fordham’s part not to include this information on their website.  We were wrong.

We began by writing a letter to the president of the University in October, explaining the situation and how it could be resolved.  We made this request from the position of consumers of Fordham’s health insurance looking for information, rather than as a group making demands.  We explained that adequate notice of Fordham’s policies were imperative in order to allow students to make the best decision regarding their health care.

We received an answer to our letter about two weeks after we sent it.  The response was basically that the University would look into making the communications and policies more clear.  (The website was eventually updated on January 23.)   Our follow-up questions to where these policies exist were met with a vague response stating the policy is reflected in the mission and tradition of the University.

At this point, we wanted to do something to draw attention to the issue and also something to help provide health care to the students who needed it.  And so we arrived at our next solution:  host a birth control clinic on or near campus!

Step Three:  Use the Resources in the Reproductive Justice Community to Make It Happen

Of course, we didn’t know exactly where to start.  We began by contacting the national LSRJ office, as well as some of our professors for names of doctors or nurse practitioners who would be willing to help us.  We were eventually put into contact with the amazing Institute for Family Health here in New York.  The doctors there were more than willing to come to Fordham to put on a clinic that would provide health care access to students.  They were also able to do this at no cost, which was a great help, since Fordham had asked us not to use any University funds for this event.

We also held our event just off campus at the New York Institute of Technology.  Fordham would not allow this event on campus.  NYIT was generous to provide us with a perfect space for the clinic without cost.

So we had an idea for an event (check), event space (check), doctors to prescribe birth control and answer questions (check), food (check – paid for by an anonymous donor), and prizes for reproductive rights jeopardy (check – thanks LSRJ!).  Now we just needed to let people know about the event.  We went to the press, submitting dozens of tips to any news source we could think of, which ended up being very successful.  The attention from the press led to even more support for our event, and we were able to get literature and support from other reproductive rights organizations, such as NARAL and Catholics for Choice.

Ginormous event poster - check! Photo of Leila and Emily in our lovely cafeteria courtesy of Bridgette.

During the event-planning process we ran into some roadblocks.  We weren’t able to put up posters around the law school advertising the event (our posters were not approved by Student Affairs), so we emailed the student body and asked students to put up mini-posters on their lockers that line the hallways of the law school.  We got an amazing response to this, and soon the school was full of posters anyway.  We also had some difficulties with our first space that we rented for the clinic.  We chose a space in a building just off campus that housed several floors of Fordham classrooms.  We thought that it would be convenient since students were already familiar with the space.  After we signed a rental contract, the organization refused to let us use the space. This was frustrating, and meant a time-consuming scramble for a new space, but we got it done.

So, how did it go?

Our birth control clinic and sexual health fair was a huge success!  Over one hundred people came to support us and forty women received birth control prescriptions.  The students who came engaged in small discussions around the room, and it was great to see many of the issues surrounding birth control at Fordham being hashed out.  It was also amazing to provide answers to questions that students had about Fordham policies or anything else, and to direct students to other resources when we did not know the answers.  We were so happy to have helped these students receive health care that they may not have received otherwise.

Lots of quality discussion! Photo courtesy of Fordham Observer.

Our event drew some local and national attention, largely due to the timing of the Department of Health and Human Services debating whether to extend the religious exemption to include religious universities in November and determining against this decision this January.  Our event was discussed in diverse media sources, such as Fox News, the New York Times, the Fordham Observer (here and here), Jezebel, RH Reality Check (here and here and here for podcast), Above the Law, the New York Daily News, Slate, the Huffington Post, the Daily Mail, and the National Catholic Register, among others.  We were interviewed for some of these publications, but not all.  In some cases, the authors of the articles misunderstood our event, and we made an effort to contact those authors to correct them in order to ensure our message was clear.  It was really interesting to read about our event in these sources, and to read the many (positive and negative) comments generated by those articles.

Bridgette being interviewed by Fox News. Photo courtesy of Emily.

We had our event attendees fill out a brief exit survey, which was helpful in determining how many people attended and the issues that mattered to them.  We received a lot of positive feedback from the students who attended, and got some great ideas for future birth control events.  For example, we heard several comments asking for “more diverse types and sizes of condoms” and “guest speakers for next time.”  My personal favorite piece of feedback was from an undergraduate who stated she said, “I posted about the event on my Facebook wall, and then got a message from my father, telling me to ‘grow up.’  Being conscious about my sexual health is growing up!”

This January, the University did update the website to address some of our concerns about the lack of clarity on Fordham’s policy.  We are glad that some progress was made.  The website now discusses birth control in two places – once in the FAQs and once in the Women’s Health Care section, where it is explicitly stated that “[n]either contraceptives nor birth control are distributed or prescribed on premises as a standard practice. Student Health Services does make limited exceptions for the treatment of medical conditions accompanied by supporting documentation.”  The language here is very clear, which we appreciate.  However, we still want to know what medical conditions are considered, of what severity, and what documentation students need if they have a medical reason to be prescribed oral contraceptives.  Given the requirement of documentation from and outside doctor, we also want to know why the people treating us aren’t allowed to make these diagnoses themselves.  We hope to continue working with Fordham to clarify these policies and educate students about the policies as much as possible.

Our impressions of this process left us in awe of the support that we received from the reproductive justice community.  We got many emails from students, professors, and alumni who were behind us.  We also were happy to see that it was really easy to put together the event with the support of the community.  But best of all, we helped Fordham women receive health care.

Emily T. Wolf, Vice-President, Fordham Law Students for Reproductive Justice

This blog is part of the #HERvotes blog carnival and is cross-posted from Fordham LSRJ’s blog.

After spending the past three semesters trying to understand Fordham University’s birth control prescription policy, we recently had a small victory when the University updated the health center’s website to clarify that birth control will not be prescribed at Fordham unless the student has a medical exception.  This victory came at the same time as a larger victory announced by the Department of Health and Human Services that a religious exemption to contraceptive coverage in health insurance will not be extended.

This is great news for students.  While insured students at Fordham and in New York are already covered by a New York state law that mandates insurance coverage for contraceptives (as well as students in 27 other states), this will ensure that all students who attend religious universities will be able to receive contraceptive at a more reasonable cost without a copay.  As we know, students are a vulnerable population (almost one in five young women ages 18-24 have experienced forced sexual intercourse) and low-cost contraception is an important part of being able to foster our own sexual health decisions.  Contraception can also ensure that students are able to decide when and how to parent children, which will certainly have an effect on students’ future careers.

Students of many different faiths and experiences attend religious universities.  While those in favor of a more broad religious exemption may have a problem with contraception as an imposition to their consciences, similar exemptions are already in place in over half of the states.  The Obama administration must continue to stand up for all of us to ensure that we receive the health care we need to survive and thrive.

Joanne Caceres, Harvard Law School

It is a cold and quiet month for Harvard LSRJ. Our “January Term” is winding down, a one month term where one can take a class, write a paper, or work at an externship, and it  means that Harvard students spread out across the country and organization activities slow down. But that’s not to say we’re not revving up for the spring! We are looking forward to our regional conference in February, our annual Sex-Ed Trivia event, and an in-the-works social justice conference centered around economic justice.

In addition, Harvard is offering an International Reproductive Rights Reading Group, which I and several LSRJ’ers will be eagerly participating in. The reading group coincides with one of our goals for our chapter this term, which is to put on at least one event about reproductive justice in the international sphere. Of course, there is also plenty going on domestically, and I am disappointed with politicians on the right and left (Mitt Romney’s statement that Griswold v. Connecticut may have been improperly decided and Obama’s support of Kathleen Sebelius’ reversal of the FDA’s recommendation to sell Plan B over the counter to minors both immediately come to mind). It all reminds me that it is an important time for lawyers who care about reproductive justice to be involved.

Mallory Carlberg, University of Oklahoma College of Law

*This post is part of a series written in support of Trust Women Week Silver Ribbon Campaign and the online virtual march from January 20-27. LSRJ is proud to partner with numerous orgs across the country – join the march by sending a message to your lawmakers today! And check back here throughout the week for more posts.

With the anniversary of Roe and the start of a new year, January is a time of reflection for the reproductive justice movement. Reproductive rights organizations publish summaries of the previous year’s anti-abortion legislation and predict what’s to come as state legislatures reconvene. OU LSRJ students have been discussing new bills Oklahoma legislators will introduce this session. In addition to the widely publicized bill outlawing the use of fetuses in the food industry. Legislators will also introduce a personhood bill and a bill requiring the use of an electric fetal heart monitor during abortion procedures. It’s easy to focus solely on the abortion debate since abortion opponents are often loudest about this issue. But there is another issue that deserves our attention: the idea of contraception as prevention.

I want to be clear that what I mean by contraception as prevention is not that we should be preventing abortions. Once we start saying there are good and bad reasons to have abortions, we are no longer trusting women. Our focus instead should be on preventing unplanned pregnancy. Of course this would also prevent abortions, but we should be supporting contraception because it helps people control when or if they have a child and not solely because it prevents abortions.

This year extremist anti-birth control views reached the mainstream. Four GOP presidential candidates participated in a debate sponsored by Personhood USA and signed a “personhood pledge”. Rick Santorum, a GOP frontrunner, has gone so far as to call birth control dangerous because it enables people to have non-procreative sex. And here in Oklahoma a well-known Representative went on record saying that some forms of birth control kill a person. The previous examples show that although Griswold v. Connecticut established a right to privacy and a right to contraception way back in 1965, these rights are still not secure. Affordable, accessible birth control is still not a reality for all.

This year there were both victories and setbacks in the fight to expand birth control access. Under the Affordable Care Act most women employed in the US will have their birth control fully covered by their insurance and religiously affiliated employers will not be exempt from this. However, this year HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius vetoed the FDA’s recommendation that Plan B be available to teens under 17 without a prescription. Pharmacists also continue to deny adult men and women access to emergency contraception based on misunderstandings about the law or moral objections to the method.

As we celebrate Roe this week, we should remember that making affordable and accessible birth control is just as important as making abortion affordable and accessible. People need both birth control and access to safe abortions to achieve reproductive autonomy.

Mallory Carlberg, University of Oklahoma College of Law

This month an attorney from the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) visited Oklahoma to talk about her work with grassroots activists in Mississippi. Mississippi voters recently rejected Initiative 26, a personhood amendment, which would have defined legal personhood at the moment of fertilization. Shortly after the victory in Mississippi, an Oklahoma group announced they would seek approval to collect the needed signatures to put a personhood amendment on our next ballot. Mississippi activists did a wonderful job with their various campaigns against personhood, but activists here are glad to get earlier notice of a similar campaign and to learn from their experiences.

The NAPW attorney discussed campaign logistics with us. Mostly she stressed that we need to be flexible in our messaging. For example, health care professionals are going to have different concerns than lawyers who are going to have different concerns than people of faith. Throughout her talk, I thought about last summer’s LSRJ Leadership Institute where I heard a presentation on the role of lawyers in the reproductive justice movement. The speaker said that lawyers should be the experts on reproductive rights law and provide activists with information and resources. NAPW is a great example of a national reproductive rights legal organization working with local reproductive justice activists in this way.

If the media dedicated airtime to Initiative 26 at all, most reporters focused on the amendment’s possible effects on birth control and assisted reproductive technology. However, NAPW has been highlighting the equally, if not more, troublesome effect an amendment might have on pregnant women who choose to carry their pregnancies to term. Explaining to the general public that, under a personhood amendment, a woman could lose her status as a constitutional person is a more difficult task, which requires legal experts at least initially. NAPW has framed the message in an accessible way, using legal research and past cases on which they have worked to show how a personhood amendment could create unprecedented state power to control pregnant women. Here is an example of a resource they provided for grassroots groups in Mississippi (http://youtu.be/iU2BZN_GrhI).

Hopefully, Personhood Oklahoma will not collect the signatures they need, but with the support of reproductive rights lawyers, Oklahoma activists are preparing for if they do, and OU LSRJ will be there to foster an in-depth discussion among our classmates on the legal issues surrounding fetal personhood.

Candace Gibson, University of Utah College of Law

As many of you know, October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.  For the past couple of years, the Women Lawyers of Utah and other Utah bar organizations have planned the Walk Against Violence as a way to fundraise for our local YWCA.  Because of this, the University of Utah Law Students for Reproductive Justice Chapter (UULSRJ) began its public relations efforts at our law school by tabling on various reproductive justice issues.  In this manner, we hope to educate people about reproductive justice in all its intersectional, multi issue glory.  So last week we tabled on domestic violence and in the coming weeks, we will table on infant and maternal mortality, global reproductive rights, and health disparities.

As we talked to students about our chapter, I noticed that we had some problems communicating what reproductive justice is as a concept and as a way of organizing.  I think there are two reasons for this.  First, we need to get better at our basic thirty second elevator spiel.  Second, I think when some people of my generation hear “reproductive” they automatically think of abortion and contraceptives.  In fact, as I was discussing the national LSRJ office and our multi-issue work to a classmate, she told me that she thought that the term “reproductive justice” wasn’t useful for our mission.  She thought we should use another phrase because to her, “reproductive justice” automatically links to “reproductive rights” and makes her think of only abortion and contraceptives.  As I talked to another peer, he said the same thing, and then I talked to a first year, and he had no clue what I was discussing.

So this begs three questions.  Can reproductive justice ever be explained in a sound bite like the “Pro-Choice” or “Pro-Life” communities describe themselves (and thus be easily digested) and, more importantly, do we even want that?  As a movement, do we need to better articulate what reproductive justice is and better publicize the work that we do on multiple issues?  This is tougher than it appears to be, as I think that because we constantly have to defeat onslaughts of anti-women and anti-family legislation, individuals outside our movement think that we only work on abortion and contraceptive issues.

While some of you ponder these questions, send your 30 second RJ soundbites my way!

Mallory Carlberg, University of Oklahoma College of Law

After some trouble getting official recognition and a faculty sponsor, our first event is FINALLY happening next week. In the mean time, my co-chair and I have been assembling the executive board and promoting the event. This gave us many opportunities to have conversations about reproductive justice. The stories students told when we broached the subject impacted us both. Almost every student we spoke to had personally dealt with an RJ issue.

One of our members was overjoyed when she found out she was pregnant last year. Then her baby was diagnosed with anencephaly, the absence of a large part of a brain and skull. This condition is usually not detected until late in the pregnancy. She was devastated and eventually decided to have a D & C. After learning that Oklahoma legislators were considering banning abortions after twenty weeks last session, she wanted to tell her story. A journalist interviewed her, but never published her story, saying that if she came out publicly about her late abortion, she would receive death threats. She wanted people to know how the ban will harm women who are in a similar position as she was. The law is set to go into effect on November first of this year.

Others students shared sex education experiences. Many received abstinence-only education, which often teaches students to be ashamed of their sexuality, and reinforces harmful stereotypes about men as unable to control their passions and women as the gatekeepers of morality. I often shared my sex education story about a goldfish. One day my instructor brought a goldfish in a cup to class, and likened us to the goldfish and god’s protection to the water. She then threw the contents of the cup, goldfish and all, across the room, and explained that, that is what we are like when we are outside god’s protection. She further explained that when we have premarital sex, we are outside god’s protection because we are sinning. This lesson taught us that we could either be clean, healthy virgins or dirty, unhealthy non-virgins – gasping for air on the floor, dying. There was no discussion of how we could place ourselves somewhere in the middle of those two extremes with safer sex practices.

Statistics, theories and hypotheticals are important, but personal stories affect people on a different level. Speaking with fellow students has only reinforced for me the importance of achieving reproductive justice for all. These are not peripheral problems. Reproductive oppression affects everyone at some point in their lives. We hope others come to see this through hearing stories from their fellow students at meetings.

Mallory Carlberg, University of Oklahoma Law School

Anyone who follows reproductive justice news knows that Oklahoma is often the testing ground for new anti-abortion legislation. State legislators pass bills through the House and Senate with ease. Even when a Governor vetoes a bill, both bodies often have the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto. Since the 2010 midterm election, the situation has only worsened. Our new Governor will not veto any anti-abortion measures, and our new Attorney General endorses redefining “persons” under the Fourteenth Amendment to include fetuses. Oklahoma politicians also routinely undermine other reproductive justice concerns, such as access to comprehensive sex education, family planning services, and social programs assisting struggling families.

The University of Oklahoma (OU) law school produces an excellent class of lawyers every year, most of whom will work in Oklahoma and Texas. A sizable amount will be the next generation of legislatures and judges. In classes, constitutionally protected rights are often discussed in a vacuum as if race, class, gender, sexuality and ability do not affect a person’s experience of their rights. One major goal in starting OU Law Students for Reproductive Justice (LSRJ) is to engage future Oklahoma lawmakers with reproductive rights in a deeper way. The RJ movement’s refusal to be a single-issue movement makes it ideal for building coalitions in a red state. Even if a student’s personal views are against abortion, we can often find common ground on other RJ issues like domestic violence, maternal health, and sex education.

At meetings we want to educate law students on issues they may not have considered and re-complicate the already complicated issue of abortion. This process will start with our upcoming event RJ 101. OU LSRJ members are also helping with “Take Root: Red State Perspectives on Reproductive Justice.” OU, RJ non-profits and RJ community groups have come together to bring a conference to OU next semester, which will focus on red-state specific issues. The conference will showcase national and local leaders and provide young, RJ activists with a space to meet and exchange ideas.

Though our state may have further to go than others to achieve RJ for all, the willingness of OU law students to discuss these issues and the support OU LSRJ has received from faculty inspires me. There is a small, but growing group of Oklahomans who are dedicated to bringing these issues to light. I am excited for OU LSRJ members to bring that conversation to the law school.

Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in a really interesting webinar about Emergency Contraception with Dr. James Trussell, a leading researcher in contraceptive efficacy and contraceptive methods. The webinar was focused on updates on research about emergency contraception and some of its reasons for failure, as well as information about the newest EC option, Ella, which was recently approved by an advisory committee to the FDA. Much of the information presented related to the participants of the studies that were done to calculate the effectiveness of EC.

One of the most interesting aspects of the presentation was actually the question and answer period at the end of the presentation.  The main audience of this webinar turned out to be health care providers and medical professionals who counseled women about emergency contraception options across the country and even Canada. The questions that they asked Dr. Trussell reminded me that there are so many unique situations that people can find themselves in. Some expressed concern about their patient’s ability to access medication that is not available over-the-counter in rural areas, being able to afford emergency contraception without insurance, and whether using emergency contraception could interfere with breast-feeding. It was great to hear so many people who would be able to provide them with accurate information in a non-judgmental setting.  Since the announcement of the FDA’s consideration of Ella, the amount of misinformation represented on blogs, websites and news reports reminds me how important it is to have accurate, fact-based information from professionals readily available. It hopeful to know that many of the people giving advice and counsel to young women have taken the time to educate themselves on the facts of emergency contraception from one of the leading experts in the field.

Jeryl Hayes