Way to go, WaPo:
When is $4 million really $2.8 million?
One answer is “When you’re a woman,” as the Labor Department has repeatedly found that women earn about 75 cents for every dollar that men earn for the same work.
But this week’s answer is “When you are the Office of Women’s Health” within the Food and Drug Administration. That office, which was at the center of a politically damaging storm over the emergency contraceptive “Plan B,” just had more than one-quarter of this year’s $4 million operating budget quietly removed, insiders say.
Now that is a beautiful lead.
The fact that the Office of Women’s Health is being quietly under-funded is not an accident, and it’s not a coincidence that it’s happening now. It’s the FDA’s way of telling the little ladies to step down and shut up:
Women’s health advocates inside and outside the agency suspect they are witnessing, at least in part, a long-anticipated payback for the trouble the office stirred during the prolonged debate over nonprescription sales of Plan B. Taking a position that chafed the administration’s conservative base, the office had stood up for scientific research that had backed the safety and appropriateness of such sales.
Standing up for science and appropriate healthcare in the face of the virginity-or-death crowd does not go over well. I hope that the FDA gets taken to task over this underhanded move. And I hope that progressive politicians don’t let this one slip under the radar.