So I hear from the Internet that after more than three years of delays, in a move doubtless spurred on by some fantastic grassroots activism on the part of ordinary American women, the FDA might actually get around to approving emergency contraception (EC) for over-the-counter use in the United States — this time, for serious (though I'll believe it when I see it). Will wonders never cease? If the FDA puts its money where its mouth is, American women might finally have access to the safe, effective, unintended-pregnancy-preventing product that their sisters in countless countries worldwide have been buying at the drugstore for years.

In order to ensure the fulfilment of their reproductive rights in an increasingly adverse environment, many American women have gotten crafty about accessing EC, and I've learned a lot from their example. So, in an effort to ensure against the possibility of an unintended pregnancy in my own life (especially in a country where abortion is almost completely illegal), before I moved to Nicaragua last week, I thought about filling my emergency back-up prescription for the morning-after pill.

The prescription was from my awesome, supportive, politicized, feminist gynecologist in New York — she wrote it for me a couple of years ago, just in case I needed it on a day when she wasn't in the office (since, I'm not sure if the FDA has noticed, but people sometimes have sex on Friday and Saturday nights, making the morning after a Saturday or Sunday). Then, after doing a little research, I realized I wouldn't need to fill it after all–BECAUSE EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION IS AVAILABLE OVER-THE-COUNTER IN NICARAGUA. Yes, Nicaragua, as in the country that in 2003 tried to deny a safe abortion to a 9-year-old girl who had been raped. As in the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. 

And how did my Nicaraguan colleagues react when I told them about the FDA's unconscionable foot-dragging on approving EC for over-the-counter use in the U.S.? When I told them stories about American women who had been denied emergency contraception on moral and religious grounds by pharmacists and health care providers? When I told them about the Department of Justice's latest protocol on how to support survivors of sexual assault, from which the provision of EC is conspicuously absent? The reaction was simple: Ay, Andrea, ¡Qué primitivo!