EDITORIAL: Gardner lays a political egg with surprise OTC birth control stunt

The curious push by some Republican congressional candidates to make certain kinds of oral birth control available without a prescription is a pill the public shouldn’t swallow.

In Colorado’s already-shrill U.S. Senate race between incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Udall and GOP challenger U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, the escalating war over women’s vote was predictable.

Democrats have long owned the family planning issue, pushing for cheaper, easier-to-come-by birth control, especially for poor and young women. And Democrats have grown fond of clubbing Republicans with that fact, painting GOP policy and candidates as being misogynistic, which for the most part is just untrue.

So a handful of Republicans across the country in tight races are embracing a proposal to make some common oral contraceptives available to women without a prescription. The chief proponent of this notion right now is Gardner. The move has Democrats crying “foul,” pointing out that Gardner has a long history in the Colorado legislature, and recently in the U.S. House, sponsoring bills and notions that restrict access to birth control rather than make it easier.

We side with Denver Congresswoman Dianne DeGette here, who called Gardner’s stunt “hollow.” Gardner has long embraced anti-abortion and life-at-conception positions, and his trail of legislation is indisputable on this issue. It helped to get him elected to his conservative Congressional district seat.

If he’s had a change of heart on this and related matters, which is apparent, then Gardner owes it to voters to be clear on that. But saying this push for OTC birth control reveals Gardner’s true colors borders on prevarication. We’ve never seen anything to indicate that Gardner has ever been a proponent for making women’s birth control cheap and easy. There is a large segment of Colorado voters who back Gardner’s conservative voting record and past comments on these issues. This disingenuous about-face is as misleading to them as it is to others.

What makes this even more troubling is what Gardner and Republicans aren’t saying about their new tact. An American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opinion about over-the-counter birth control pills makes clear that unplanned pregnancy is still a serious problem in the United States, and cheaper, more accessible birth control is important. But the study cautions that such a move would only be helpful if insurance companies continued to pay for birth control pills, or if the price dropped far below the $16-$50 a month or more the pill costs.

Even more important, physicians worry that pharmacists wouldn’t always dispense birth control pills without question, especially to younger women. Neither Gardner nor any of the other candidates pushing this idea talk about whether and how minors would be able to buy these birth control pills. They don’t talk about how women feel about discussing birth control with a pharmacist through a window at Wal-Mart rather than a health professional. They don’t discuss that the hormonal birth control pill industry is crowded with options that can make a decision far more difficult than deciding what brand of baby aspirin to buy.

It’s window dressing attempting to counter Democrat claims that putting Gardner in the U.S. Senate would be bad for women. That’s a complicated issue that Gardner and Udall need to explain fully to voters during the next few weeks. But Gardner’s offering of OTC birth control doesn’t answer that question, and it clouds the complicated issue of reproductive rights, accessible birth control, insurance and privacy.