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Sign the Pledge!!!

Click here to add your
name to the Pledge to
"Give the Morning-After
Pill to a Friend."

Give us your name,
City, and State, and
we'll put your name, along with the thousands others Nationwide, on the pledge.

Take the Pledge to
Your Next Event!!!

Would you like to pass around a copy of the MAP Pledge at your next meeting or action? Download a (.pdf) file of the pledge, with plenty of lined spaces for signatures. Please feel free to make as many copies as you need, and then mail them back to the address on the bottom.

 MORNING-AFTER PILL
PLEDGE

Pledge to Give Your Friend the Morning-After Pill: Thousands of women across the country regularly break the law by giving friends the Morning-After Pill (MAP) when they need it. Why is helping our friends illegal? Because this safe, after-sex birth control is still available by prescription only. This is especially outrageous considering that women in more than 38 other countries can get MAP without a prescription.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had the power to change all this. But on May 6, 2004, President Bush’s right-wing appointees to the FDA— Commissioner Lester Crawford and Dr. Steven Galson— announced that they were refusing over-the-counter status for the Morning-After Pill. These men cited concerns that access to MAP would increase ‘promiscuity’ among young women, but have ignored studies showing that teens with easy access to MAP have unprotected sex at the same rate as those without access. Under the guise of concern for young women, the FDA has denied all women access to MAP, and has towed the anti-birth control line of President Bush and other extremists.

There is no medical reason to refuse over-the-counter status for the MAP. The FDA’s own Advisory Committees overwhelmingly recommended that MAP be available without a prescription (23 to 4), as did more than 70 national medical organizations.

Recently, the makers of Plan B (a brand of Morning-After Pill) caved into pressure from the FDA to put an age restriction on MAP access. The company’s current proposal suggests that MAP be prescription-only for women under 16, while all women would have to be ID'd by pharmacists in order to get MAP. We object to this age restriction— any woman old enough to get pregnant is old enough to decide that she doesn’t want to be pregnant!

Furthermore, NO woman should be forced to present an ID to get birth control! This approach is sexist, condescending, and puts our rights in the hands of pharmacists. Pharmacists for Life and other anti-woman movements already refuse to fill women’s prescriptions for regular birth control. Some pharmacies (i.e. Wal-Mart) don’t stock MAP at all. Reproductive choices belong in women’s hands— not in the hands of pharmacists, doctors, or politicians.

The right to control when and if we have children is central to directing our lives, and all women should have all reproductive tools easily available to them. We will continue our civil disobedience until the Morning-After Pill is available to all women over-the-counter!

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ACTION:
Women all over the country are already breaking the law to evade an unjust law.  Now we are proudly going public with our actions to make clear that we will continue to increase women's access to the Morning-After Pill, illegally if necessary.

 We commit to give a friend the
Morning-After Pill any day she needs it.

To add your signature, please email your name and address,
(and group affiliation if you wish) to:
  MAPConspiracy04@hotmail.com  

Check out these links about MAP

backupyourbirthcontrol.org - a resource for do-it-yourself MAP.

not-2-late.com - another resource

MAP on Planned Parenthood - Planned Parenthood's excellent page on MAP.

Reproductive Health Technologies Project - another great and informative site.