Last Wednesday the student group VOX hosted a Health and Sexuality Fair to coincide with "Back Up Your Birth Control Day," a nation-wide event coordinated by the Institute for Reproductive Health Access.
A number of other groups, including the National Organization of Women, the Allies of Women Attaining Knowledge and Enrichment, the Sexual Assault Resource Agency, the Sexual Assault Leadership Council and others, joined VOX in the amphitheater, taking part in educating others about a variety of issues. The various groups featured literature on domestic violence against women, health and sexual assault concerns within the LGBT community, AIDS prevention and safer sex practices.
The heavy subjects at hand did not prevent those attending the event from enjoying themselves, according to fourth-year College student Addison Huber. VOX gave away cookies decorated to look like vaginas, which the fair-goers could wash down with one of eight flavors of sexual lubricant at a table featuring condoms, do-it-yourself dental dams made from latex gloves and literature on safer sex methods.
The main focus of Back Up Your Birth Control Day, however, was access to emergency contraception, or EC, according to the national coordinating organization's website. With signs around the Amphitheater and flyers advertising EC for fifteen dollars, VOX had a doctor from Planned Parenthood of the Blue Ridge, Inc. on hand to prescribe Plan B for interested female students.
According to Dr. Christine Peterson, director of gynecology at Student Health, Plan B is a type of EC that consists of two doses of levonorgestrel, a synthesized form of the female hormone progesterone, to be taken within 72 hours after unprotected sex or contraceptive failure.
"There is a lot of misinformation out there [concerning Plan B]," Peterson said.
She said the drug "has no effect on implanted embryos," meaning that it does not, by medical definition, affect women who are already pregnant. She also stressed that it is "just a synthetic form" of a "naturally occurring hormone" already present in the female body.
While it is approved by the FDA, Plan B can only be distributed to women in the United States with a prescription from a doctor, according to the Plan B Web site.
Huber expressed his frustration with the current legal status of Plan B, stating that it "seems kind of unfair" for men to not have it on hand for their partners in the event of contraceptive failure.
Unlike the United States, Canada allows pharmacies to stock Plan B as an over-the-counter product, making it as readily available to both sexes as condoms and other contraceptive measures, according to Plan B's Canadian website.
VOX, in addition to having a doctor from Planned Parenthood on hand to fill prescriptions for Plan B, displayed a large poster titled "Refusal Stories." The poster contained almost a dozen summaries of news clippings detailing stories of pharmacies that did not stock Plan B at all and pharmacists that refused to fill legally written prescriptions for the drug even when it was available.
One of the reported incidents occurred after a woman had been raped and sought Plan B. Another account related the difficulties of a husband and wife in seeking Plan B after their condom broke during intercourse.
Across from this poster was a table with paper, pens and envelopes for a letter writing campaign aimed at the national chain stores Target and Wal-Mart. The letters, according to Becky Reid, a grassroots organizer for Planned Parenthood, took aim at Target and Wal-Mart to encourage the stores to change their policy on EC. Last Monday Wal-Mart announced that all of its stores nation-wide would stock Plan B, but according to Reid, the company has yet to guarantee that prescriptions for the drug must be filled by its pharmacists. She stated that Target has a similar policy on whether or not its pharmacists can refuse to fill prescriptions for EC.
"It's not about forcing individual pharmacists to fill prescriptions for EC, it's about allowing women to fill prescriptions in-store and without discrimination or delay," Reid said.
Not everyone said they felt the same way. Danielle Larkin, the president of First Right, a pro-life group on Grounds, wrote in an e-mail that her organization did "not support the use of Plan B that was being prescribed" at the Health and Sexuality Fair, arguing that "Plan B does have the potential to destroy life."
VOX president Laura Fischer countered that Plan B prevents unwanted pregnancies.
"Doing so reduces the number of abortions," she said. "If that was the goal of the anti-choice groups, they would be out here with us."
Regardless of the debate over EC, about sixty female students who attended the fair got a prescription for Plan B, which they will receive by mail in one or two weeks, according to Reid. When asked why they were in line for the drug, a group of women agreed that "it was good to have around, just in case."
Students in need of emergency contraception can also obtain prescriptions for Plan B at Student Health and have them filled at the Student Health pharmacy, according to Peterson. Student Health is open from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, and from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on Saturdays. In addition, Reid noted that all women can obtain Plan B at the Planned Parenthood facility on Hydraulic Road off Rt. 29.
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