In Astounding Move, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Overrules FDA Recommendation

In Astounding Move, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Overrules FDA Recommendation to Make Plan B Over-the-Counter

In what can only be called an astounding move by an Administration that pledged on inauguration day that medical and health decisions would be based on fact not ideology and for which women are a major constituency, today Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) overruled a much-awaited decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make emergency contraception (EC) available over-the-counter (OTC) to women of all ages.

According to the New York Times, "no health secretary has ever before."

EC has been available over-the-counter for women ages 18 and older for at least two years. The FDA has been further reviewing data on whether the method should be available OTC without a prescription to those age 17 and younger at risk from unprotected intercourse.

In a statement this afternoon FDA underscored that it "had been carefully evaluating for over a decade whether emergency contraceptives containing levonorgestrel, such as Plan B One-Step, are safe and effective for nonprescription use to reduce the chance of pregnancy after unprotected sexual intercourse."

more at http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/12/07/in-astounding-move-hhs-secretary-kathleen-sebelius-overrules-fda-recommendation-t

also see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/health/policy/sebelius-overrules-fda-on-freer-sale-of-emergency-contraceptives.html

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this would save so many young women from having to make a decision a few weeks later in life that could change their life forever....

If he can, he'd better. Quicklike.

He has no interest in overruling her, and won't.

She was told to do what she did.

that this is the red meat that this Administration is throwing to the UCCSB so that the HHS Contraceptive Mandate will be enforced without exception.

Because if it isn't, I fear we are being thrown under the bus.

The frigging GOP oppo ads write themselves....12 year old girls having sex, getting pregnant, with access to birth control that will stop a pregnancy..... and THEIR PARENTS DON'T EVEN KNOW!!!! OBAMA likes little kids to have sex and buy PLAN B!!! Obama is BAD!!!

I'll bet it would have sailed through on the first WEDNESDAY of next November...

A Hobson Choice, really. Do the right thing and have this blasted 24/7 by the RW Wurlitzer as a trumped up campaign issue. Do the wrong thing and start losing the base. Win the battle, lose the war? Lose the war, win the battle? In an enlightened society, it would be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, we are cursed with having to factor politics into what most sane people know is a wise social policy to keep children from having babies.

Oh well, the real losers here really are the conservative parents who'll be burdened in supporting their children's children. Progressive parents will most likely find options to deal with the situation pragmatically.

and say "We looked at it for a WHOLE year and decided to run with it," or they can spend from now until Election Day 2012 defending their "willful prostitution of pre-teen girls" or Lies To That Effect.

It's just not a good idea to give those morons the club with which to beat our heads in. Not right now.

I hope our team is bright enough to see this--a little "harrumphing" so the other side knows that we are annoyed and thwarted, but no Taking Ball, Going Home over this. It can be fixed on the other side of Election Day.

rules from way right of center. Hope failed. Obama may be the best Republican President I can remember during my 60+ years.

who, by engaging in sex, are engaged in the act of statutory rape.

It's a no-win. Little girls who decide to screw around without birth control are going to have to get their older sister or their friend's older sister to buy the Plan B for them for the next year, until after the next election.

Unless you're willing to donate millions to a SUPERPAC whose sole job will be to slap down all of the "Obama facilitates Child Rape" ads from the Christian Nutjob Right...because that IS what it will take...millions. And even at that, it will serve to depress the vote.

FDA says Plan B is as safe for younger women as older. So if the (local) law says a teen girl is in charge of her body at whatever age, so that she can get married if she wants to, and isn't jail bait anymore for a lover if she doesn't want to, how can her access to Plan B possibly be restricted by a different standard - presumably based entirely on what some unelected Nannycrat thinks is unseemly? I think someone else besides the drunk driving head of the FAA should be resigning in disgrace this week.

then you must agree that there cannot possibly be a legal restriction on 16 yros purchasing PlanB in those states (at least).

Tell me how many of those states have recently prosecuted 16 yro boys for purchasing condoms? How many have recently prosecuted 15 yro boys for purchasing condoms?

Condoms don't involve the ingestion of medication. Plan B isn't a bit of latex, it's a drug, and it CAN be regulated at the federal level with an age limit imposed towards OTC use.

A ten year old (male or female) can buy a condom; but, as I said, it's not something to be ingested and digested, now, is it?

So, why would anyone be prosecuted for engaging an entirely legal activity?

Apples and oranges.

FWIW, an underaged teen CAN get Plan B--with a prescription, or from a physician.

OR, Mom or Dad could go buy it for the kid. Bottom line, though--the kid is going to have to see someone if they have unprotected sex, at least for the next 12 months. In other words, nothing has changed for that underaged child, and won't, not until after the next election, anyway.

with no arbitrary 17 year old cutoff.
without the restriction that the Obama Administration is insisting on.

So, FAIL: for ignoring a basic fact of the issue conveyed in topic paragraphs of any article on the subject.

This controversy has NOTHING to do with safety of a product and/or the mental readiness of young persons - who are after all already entrusted by the states to pilot 3,000 lb vehicles at up to 65 or 70mph on federal highways- to judge the potential "risks" involved in ingesting it.

Instead it has everything to do with girl parts, and the squeamishness of some who refuse to allow women to own their internal organs, since they endanger the fragile masculine sense of a sovereign monopoly over human reproduction.

Cold medications with far more dangerous side effects, substances which are abused to get high - those any teenage girl can buy in any quantity and always could. No Federal law as yet prevents them from walking in and buying OTC Dextromethorphan products (It has taken 5 decades for such controls to even be proposed). But something that would allow a girl to fend off the consequence of date rape or a broken condom without having to involve and get permission from authorities, her parents, doctors? No, that individual liberty she cannot be allowed to have. No that is a WHOLLY DIFFERENT MATTER AND RECEIVES COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TREATMENT. She must do the slut walk of shame to get out of her predicament, or else roll the dice and hope nothing develops in her tummy. If it was a matter of "safety concerns" as you pretend, the FDA wouldn't have to be OVERRULED in this case, and adults as well as teenagers would need a prescription, too.

You can yell at me all you want, that's not going to change the ruling.

I wouldn't look for a ruling change for, oh, twelve months.

Get off the high horse, he could use a break. Stop shooting the messenger.

Got it.

and put Saint Now A Catholic Newt in the White House, and you can kiss Plan B goodbye for EVERYONE, AND quite possibly Roe v. Wade. Then you'll really have something to cry about.

Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Or do. I really don't care. I'm tired of these broad brushed "Obama is evil" themes. Now he's in the Wimmen Hater's club because he doesn't want to get into a fight with the right about 12 year olds having access to "rape medicine" in the run up to an election, and you just can't understand this plainly political decision, like it's a total mystery to you how that could "possibly" be used against him....


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there is a question about a product that "10 or 11 year-old" GIRLS would have NEED of?

It would appear that our *feminist* President doesn't care.