In December 2011, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius ordered a reversal of an FDA decision to make Plan B “morning
after” pills available over the counter without age restrictions. Sebelius put
an age bar on the decision, which blocked all girls under 17 from buying the
contraception without a written doctor’s prescription.
But now a U.S. District Judge in Brooklyn, New York, has
overturned that decision. Judge Edward Korman ordered on Friday, April 5th,
that the pill be made available over the counter to all girls and women of
reproductive age.
Korman
ruled that Sebelius’s former decision was “arbitrary, capricious and
unreasonable,” and stated that he believed the decision had been made
solely for political purposes. The FDA and a multitude of scientists and
doctors had already concluded that the pill would be safe for minors at the
time the original decision was made. It was also determined that making it
available without prescription did not
promote promiscuity in minors, as some had previously claimed.
Judge Korman, along with a slough of others, criticized the
Obama administration for backing up Sebelius’s decision to intervene. It was
made less than a year before the re-election campaign in 2012, at a time when
Obama’s aim was to gain the support of more politically conservative voters.
Korman’s decision, however, is being praised by many. “Women
all over the country will no longer face arbitrary delays and barriers just to
get emergency contraception,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for
Reproductive Rights.
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