In March, the board of supervisors for San Bernardino, a traditionally conservative county outside Los Angeles, voted in favor of eliminating access to emergency contraception in all of the county's public health clinics. Since those clinics are funded under the federal family planning Title X provision, the board of supervisors submitted its request for a waiver to the California Family Health Council in early April, a state organization charged with overseeing the use of federal funds. In letters submitted to the CFHC, the board of supervisors used the vague (and inaccurate) argument that "high dose estrogen has known side effects and risks" to support its request.

More familiar was the supervisors' argument that emergency contraception is, in fact, a type of abortion. "There continues to be debate in the scientific community as to whether the morning after pill ... should appropriately be considered pregnancy prevention, termination, or emergency contraception," the letter argued. (The board of supervisors' office did not return my phone call seeking comment.)

The CFHC denied the San Bernardino request on June 1, so the county's women still have access to emergency contraception at local clinics. Although supervisor Bill Postmus, who led the charge against emergency contraception, originally pledged to appeal the decision, he was outvoted 3-2 last week. Margie Fites Seigle, CEO of the CFHC, believes that the supervisors were counting on a friendly reception with the conservative Bush administration. "I think that certainly there was a feeling from some of the members of the board of supervisors that there was the potential of a more friendly hearing in Washington, should this get to that point," she says.

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Will Washington move against emergency birth control? Now that the Senate is no longer controlled by the GOP, with its powerful religious-right faction, pro-choice activists are breathing more easily. Some recent developments, such as a federal court ruling on June 12 that will force some employers to provide health insurance covering contraceptives, have also encouraged them. And as long as the majority of the medical establishment continues to fight for widespread option of emergency contraception, the odds are slim that it will disappear.

But nothing regarding politics and pregnancy is ever final. And while liberals and conservatives battle it out over sex education programs and abstinence and whether emergency contraception really is abortion, 1.3 million teen and adult women still troop to abortion clinics every year.

For Purdon, head of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, it's a practical matter. "While we certainly respect people's right to have their own moral and philosophical views about this, from a practical matter these numbers are real numbers and this kind of thing is happening every year in the U.S.," he says. "For equal rights for women, it's imperative that they have that choice."

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