As you may have heard, FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford has resigned
his post -— only two months after the Senate confirmed him to head
the agency. Apparently the negative press from his repeated stalling,
the incessant phone calls from angry women, and the hundreds of pages
of pledge signatures being regularly faxed to his office got the
better of him.  He said in an interview with Forbes.com that one of
the factors contributing to his decision was the controversy over the
Morning-After Pill, which he said he no longer wanted to deal with.

	"Another year of that stuff?" Crawford said, "I didn’t think I was up
to it."

	The new interim head for the FDA is Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach 
(a close friend of the Bush family), who has worked to spread
misinformation about abortion by perpetuating the myth that there is
a link between abortion and breast cancer. He will undoubtedly tow
the anti-birth control line of the Bush Administration. When asked
about Crawford's repeated decisions to stall a decision on the
Morning-After Pill, von Eschenbach said: "[When] science is
incomplete, we have to err on the side of safety." 

	The Morning-After Pill has been deemed safe by the FDA’s own
scientific advisory committees, the American Medical Association, the
New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American
Medical Association. Dr. von Eschenbach’s comment is laughable
because the science is rarely so complete as this!  But like the men
who wanted to "protect" women from the vote or the Equal Rights
Amendment— it seems that this new commissioner wants to keep women
down, and then has the audacity to call it "protection."

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

1.      Call interim FDA Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach at
(301) 827-2410 and tell him to make the Morning-After Pill
over-the-counter now!! We need to show him from DAY ONE that if he
doesn’t listen to women, he too will go the way of his predecessor. 

2.      Get everyone you know (hey, and strangers too) to sign our
pledge. 

3.      Send money to our campaign. Donations can be made out to
Gainesville Area NOW and sent to P.O. Box 2235, Gainesville, FL
32602.  To use your credit card or direct withdrawal from your bank
account, 
go to Paypal.com, and donate any amount, using the email address
<lisa@gainesvillenow.org> 


Kelly Mangan- 
Florida NOW Young Feminist Task Force