  We consider a higher derivative effective theory for an Abelian gauge field
in three dimensions, which represents the result of integrating out heavy
matter fields interacting with a classical gauge field in a parity-conserving
way. We retain terms containing up to two derivatives of $F_{\mu\nu}$, but make
no assumption about the strength of this field. We then quantize the gauge
field, and compute the one-loop effective action for a constant $\fmn$. The
result is explicitly evaluated for the case of a constant magnetic field.
