Women of America, help has arrived at last. president Bush gave us all a present on Christmas Eve by appointing Robert Hager to the Food and Drug Administration's Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs. You remember Hager. Bush announced his intention to appoint him in October, and the protests were loud and forceful. So the president waited until we were opening Christmas gifts and drinking eggnog--and the media was doing a hundred holiday stories--and quietly made the appointment.

Hager has a lot to offer women. A member of several fundamentalist Christian medical groups, he has condemned the use of birth control pills because he believes they lead to premarital sex (boy, does he need to get out more), and he has lobbied to reverse the FDA's approval of RU-486.

But his most outstanding contribution is his cure for PMS: hold a Bible, pray and do scripture readings. This cannot possibly make him very popular with pharmaceutical companies, but the thousands of women who suffer from severe cramping, agitation and depression are free at last...