The James Madison University Board of Visitors voted 10-2 at its meeting last Friday to allow the JMU Health Center to distribute emergency contraceptives to students, reversing a ban stemming from a previous Board vote in April.
The Board also added language which "further grants authority for all future health-related decisions pertaining to students to the administration and its medical staff."
The vote came after members of the new Board, whose composition has changed since April, stated a desire to avoid involvement in decisions over emergency contraceptives and other drugs that they characterized as not within their area of authority.
After Del. Robert Marshall, R-Manassas, sent a letter to JMU last April, the Board voted 7-6 to prohibit doctors at the health center from distributing emergency contraceptives on campus, but continued to allow health center doctors to write prescriptions. Students obtaining a prescription had to buy the pills at an off-campus pharmacy.
JMU student groups immediately organized a campaign against the decision.
According to Levar Stoney, Student Government Association president at JMU, students collected over 3,000 signatures on a petition against the Board's decision. After the signatures were collected, SGA passed a resolution condemning the decision.
"It was the strongest form of resolution we could pass," Stoney said.
Stoney added that SGA had lobbied the Board several times to revisit their decision but that only after Gov. Mark R. Warner appointed five new members did the new Board agree to discuss the decision again.
"I think [the new Board members were] definitely a factor that played into the decision," Stoney said.
JMU spokesperson Fred Hilton said several members seemed to agree with Board member Stephen R. Leeolou, who argued that the April vote came in an area with which the Board should not have interfered.
"This is a question we shouldn't have gotten into in the first place -- this was the message the Board gave," Hilton said.
At least one Board member, however, agreed with Marshall's view that the pill is not a contraceptive device but an abortion device, according to Hilton.
Emergency contraceptives, taken up to 72 hours after intercourse, usually prevent or delay ovulation. According to Christine Peterson, director of gynecology at U.Va.'s Student Health Center, an emergency contraceptive can sometimes have a post-fertilization effect.
"We don't know exactly what that effect is," Peterson said.
This element of emergency contraceptives concerns many anti-abortion advocacy groups and lawmakers, although the Food and Drug Administration classifies them as contraceptives. Last month, an FDA advisory panel recommended that two emergency contraceptives currently available through prescription also be made available over the counter.
Both Peterson and Ann Simmons, coordinator of health education programs at JMU, greeted the decision with approval and relief.
"From our standpoint in the [JMU] health center, we were relieved as well as pleased with all the support we had within, both administrative and student support, to take this back to the Board for a revote," Simmons said.
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