Judge Overturns Plan B Age Restriction

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 5^th, 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.