An advisory panel at the Food and Drug Administration this month unanimously recommended that a contraceptive pill, Opill, be made available over the counter. At a 1992 conference on birth control, an official on the F.D.A.’s fertility and maternal health drugs advisory committee, Philip Corfman, noted that the birth control pill is safer than aspirin, which is available over the counter. subsequently announced plans to convene a hearing to consider moving oral contraceptives over-the-counter. It was believed that this would greatly expand access to birth control by bypassing doctors, to whom millions of Americans then — as still now — had little access. Dr. Prescott reported that the program director of the National Women’s Health Network at the time, Cindy Pearson, said that a “birth control prescription is the poor woman’s ticket to health care.” Advocates for women’s health were concerned that if birth control were made available over the counter, then insurance might stop paying for it and impose new financial barriers to access.

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