Feds surrender: Teens can buy 'morning-after pill'

The federal government said today it will end its years-long fight against a judge's order to allow girls of any age to buy emergency contraception without prescriptions.?

By Tom Hays,?Associated Press / June 10, 2013

Pharmacist Simon Gorelikov holds a generic emergency contraceptive, also called the morning-after pill, at the Health First Pharmacy in Boston, May 2, 2013. A federal appeals court has ruled that girls of any age must have access to generic versions of emergency contraception without prescriptions. Until today, the federal government was fighting this ruling.

Elise Amendola/AP/File

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The federal government on Monday told a judge it will reverse course and take steps to comply with his order to allow girls of any age to buy emergency contraception without prescriptions.

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The decision ends a years-long fight between President Barack Obama's administration, which had argued that age limits for the morning-after pill are common sense, and women's rights groups, which insisted the drug should be made as freely available as aspirin.

The Department of Justice, in the latest development in the complex back-and-forth over access to the drug, notified U.S. District Judge Edward Korman it will submit a plan for compliance. If he approves it, the department will drop its appeal of his April ruling.

According to the department's letter to the judge, the Food and Drug Administration has told the maker of the pills to submit a new drug application with proposed labeling that would permit it to be sold "without a prescription and without age or point-of-sale prescriptions." The FDA said that once it receives the application it "intends to approve it promptly."

Last week, an appeals court dealt the government a setback by saying it would immediately permit unrestricted sales of the two-pill version of the emergency contraception until the appeal was decided. That order was met with praise from advocates for girls' and women's rights and with scorn from social conservatives and other opponents, who argue the drug's availability takes away the rights of parents of girls who could get it without their permission.

Advocates for girls' and women's rights said Monday the federal government's decision to comply with the judge's ruling could be a move forward for "reproductive justice" if the FDA acts quickly and puts emergency contraception over the counter without restriction.

Annie Tummino, lead plaintiff in a lawsuit over unrestricted access to the morning-after pill and coordinator of the National Women's Liberation, said women and girls should have "the absolute right to control our bodies without having to ask a doctor or a pharmacist for permission."

"It's about time that the administration stopped opposing women having access to safe and effective birth control," she said in an emailed statement.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards, in a statement, called the government's decision to drop the appeal "a huge breakthrough for access to birth control and a historic moment for women's health and equity."

But opponents of easy access to the morning-after pill, such as the anti-abortion Family Research Council, criticized the government for not sticking with its decision to appeal.

"We're very concerned and disappointed at the same time because what we see here is the government caving to political pressure instead of putting first the health and safety of girls (and) parental rights," said Anna Higgins, director of the council's Center for Human Dignity.

The government had appealed the judge's underlying April 5 ruling, which ordered emergency contraceptives based on the hormone levonorgestrel be made available without a prescription, over the counter and without point-of-sale or age restrictions.

It had asked the judge to suspend the effect of that ruling until the appeals court could decide the case. But the judge declined, saying the government's decision to restrict sales of the morning-after pill was "politically motivated, scientifically unjustified and contrary to agency precedent." He also said there was no basis to deny the request to make the drugs widely available.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/4pbttRJgOcQ/Feds-surrender-Teens-can-buy-morning-after-pill

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