4.24.00
The Gospel According to Planned Parenthood

4.24.00
The Goon with the Gun

4.22.00
This Is America?

4.22.00
Elián Raid: Simply Un-American

4.20.00
Elián Meets Dan and Oprah

4.18.00
Rocker's Return

4.17.00
Takin It to the Streets

4.17.00
Way Out There

4.13.00
Feds Overreach on Elián

4.12.00
The Big Deuce for Noonan

4.11.00
House Invites Juan Miguel to the Hill

4.10.00
NRO Tops NY Times

4.10.00
Judis Strikes Again

4.07.00
Elián Fatigue

4.05.00
Most Treasured Right

3.30.00
Anti-Hillary Tome Hits Bestseller List

3.29.00
Elian and his Enemies

3.29.00
Reagan: Wrong Man, Right Time?

3.28.00
Forbes Endorses Bush

3.28.00
Enter Saint Jack

3.27.00
Oscar Wrap

ince "emergency contraception" pills became legal in the United States a little over a year ago, abortion advocates have been dismayed that this "best-kept contraceptive secret," hasn't really caught on with the American public.

Nationally, they've tried ad campaigns in women's glossies and television commercials whose earnestness has even raised the eyebrows of the same Food and Drug Administration that expeditiously approved the first morning-after kit. One publicly funded program recently decided to take a particularly creative no-holds-barred approach to getting the word out. In Colorado, the Boulder County Health Department's Unintended Pregnancy Project has started hanging posters inside public bathroom stalls.

Posted in both women's and men's bathrooms, on the inside doors of stalls, the words "You have 72 hours to prevent an unintended pregnancy" welcome patrons of the local bagel shop and movie theater, and also, soon, students at the University of Colorado's student union. The posters include take-away postcards, like the kind one sees in all the trendiest bars and restaurants.

The county health department's guerilla-marketing tactics are particularly troublesome in Colorado, where a parental-notification law passed last year defines pregnancy as fertilization. (Planned Parenthood is currently suing the state over the law.) In an effort to avoid pro-life ire in what amounts to free advertisements for the local Planned Parenthood clinic, there's an odd attempt at full disclosure in the posters. Emergency contraception, the poster explains, can work to delay or inhibit ovulation, prevent fertilization, or inhibit implantation. Which, according to state law, means that emergency contraceptives, are, in fact, abortifacients — a detail the poster leaves out.

Public bathrooms have been a popular dropping-off spot in recent years for desperate young women to dispose of their babies after unintended pregnancies. Perhaps if the Boulder County Public Health Department wants to really inform women of their options, they'd include a crisis-pregnancy hotline, or adoption information. Or is it that there's but one gospel they're interested in preaching?

View the poster.

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