A Clear Voice

Murray and Clinton are not trying to solve all of the above. Their target is a limited one. As long as Bush FDA nominee Dr. Les Crawford keeps bottling up a decision (one way or the other) on the sale of Plan B emergency contraceptives, they will bottle up his confirmation. There it will sit, stoppered on the top shelf of the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee.

And the move has been met with whoops by many who've grown sick of a patriarchal, supposedly "anti-big government" administration that may have shrunken federal intrusion. But, now that it's the size of a suppository, it apparently fits snugly into our hospital rooms and bedrooms, doctor's offices and drugstores.

*snort* Interesting anal-ogy there.

Still, when Murray pressed him, Crawford couldn't say when the FDA may act on Plan B. "Are we talking two weeks? Two years? Twenty years?" she asked him.

Initially, she was told there were "issues" the FDA couldn't discuss in public.

Then, in private, Murray says she was told that it wasn't the science the agency was still struggling with. It was the "behavior."

In other words, an agency whose role is to protect the public with science is using ideology instead. That would be the same agency that's under fire for putting questionable drugs back on the market under the rationale that the public has a right to make its own health decisions. (Unless, apparently, that public is female.)

Perhaps “behavior” refers to the problem of people abusing over the counter drugs without consulting a doctor, perhaps it refers to the problem of teenagers taking these drugs when their parents wouldn’t approve, or would at least like to know about it, perhaps…. Nah, that’s ridiculous. It’s obviously all about ideology and Republicans wanting to stomp on women.

Crawford could not give Murray a date for an up or down vote on over-the-counter sale of the morning after pill. Certainly it wouldn't happen before today -- the magical April 13 date originally set for his confirmation. So Murray told him, in that case, she couldn't give a date for his confirmation either.

Ah yes, these wonderful senator moms (of daughters) aren’t at all abusing their power. Not at all, that’s something only evil Republicans do.

Apparently Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, also a member of the Health, Education and Labor Committee, is content to wait, saying he trusts that the "FDA will do the right thing," eventually. But thankfully, the senator moms are not.

Perhaps Kennedy understands that the approval process at the FDA takes a while and that they need to consider a lot of factors, one of them not being the ideology of hysterical abortion rights activists.

And apparently, increasing numbers of red and blue voters now are suffering symptoms of discomfort as well. "What's next, (refusal to sell) condoms?" columnist Ellen Goodman wondered recently in print while "Real Time" comic host Bill Maher sarcastically suggested druggists stop selling makeup since "only sluts paint their faces."

Condoms and makeup equals a pill whose long term effects haven’t been studied. Uh-hu.

I'm not talking about notes, calls and e-mail from readers in liberal Seattle, either. Recently I got a card bearing the American flag and the lyrics of "The Star-Spangled Banner," mailed from Sultan.

Ha! Look, a tacit admission that liberals are less likely to be patriotic.

Inside was an article titled "Access Denied" about doctors and pharmacists refusing to write or fill birth control prescriptions. "As to women's options," the writer said, "we surely need less intervention from such as the so-called 'moral majority.' "

Again, pharmacists and health care workers acting on their conscience equals governmental intervention from the “so-called” moral majority. Is anyone not getting the contradiction here?

Like me, the writer must have been proud last week, when Sen. Murray drew the line.

Yes, I’m sure you were both proud of Murray’s tantrum.