The New Hampshire state Senate has voted to allow women to buy emergency contraception without a prescription after unprotected sex. Gov. John Lynch supports the bill and will sign the measure if it passes the House. The bill would allow specially trained pharmacists to offer the so-called "morning after" pill, which is a large dose of birth control hormones that can prevent pregnancy if taken soon after unprotected sex. The federal Food and Drug Administration advisory committees last year recommended that the drug be made available over the counter, but an agency director said not enough information was known about the pill's use by young teenagers or how it would affect their sexual behavior. One legislator said: "I do not believe the punishment for youthful indiscretion for unguarded sex is to force young women to have an abortion or unwanted pregnancy." Another said: "Young boys can go get what they have to have. Young girls should have equal rights." Maine voted last year to allow pharmacists to dispense the contraceptives without a prescription - becoming the sixth state to do so.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has struck back at pharmacists who think it's okay to play the morals card at work. He filed an emergency rule Friday requiring pharmacies that sell contraceptives to fill prescriptions for birth control quickly, following recent incidents in which a Chicago pharmacist refused to fill orders for contraceptives because of moral opposition. "Our regulation says that if a woman goes to a pharmacy with a prescription for birth control, the pharmacy or the pharmacist is not allowed to discriminate or to choose who he sells it to or who he doesn't sell it to," Blagojevich said. "The pharmacy will be expected to accept that prescription and fill it ... No delays. No hassles. No lectures."

Connecticut's attorney general said today that he was preparing to sue the federal government over President Bush's signature education-reform law, arguing that it forces Connecticut to administer new standardized tests at a cost of millions of dollars and that Washington refuses to pay for them. The Connecticut attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat first elected in 1992, said that he was announcing his plans now because he is about to contact attorneys general in other states to seek co-plaintiffs or other allies for the legal battle. "The federal government's approach with this law is illegal and unconstitutional," Mr. Blumenthal said in an interview. He declined to predict whether any of his colleagues elsewhere would join his action, but he said he was finding "fertile ground."