Letters to the Editor
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The Fight Beneath the Fight
It seems to me that this fight over Plan B (and similarly, RU-486) may actually represent a larger and more important battle on the abortion front than even the debate over an O'Connor replacement. I sense that the power brokers who have successfully tapped the abortion debate to energize the right understand something about Plan B and similar technologies; they represent the beginning of the end of making the abortion debate technologically obsolete.
Although it may be decades in coming, I think those that would exploit the debate see Plan B as a threat to one of their core issues. If people really begin to understand that Plan B isn't even, medically speaking, a method of abortion, and if Plan B is just the first of a number of advanced contraceptive technologies, than an issue that has served GOP strategists well for years might finally disappear.
I don't think we're seeing a fight against Plan B, so much as a fight to prevent the end-game from happening and preserve the abortion debate as long as possible. While I can sympathize with and even respect those that oppose abortion on moral grounds, those that would exploit the debate are nothing less than reprehensible, and liberals and pro-choice moderates need to realize just how important this fight over Plan B is.