What the Obama administration did in denying female teenagers the right to their own reproductive choice was pure politics. It wasn't based on science, only concerns about what the tea baggers would say in a presidential election whose outcome is looking to be a tight vote margin, especially in states like Ohio. Instead of doing the right thing by a teenager who's looking at a possible pregnancy, and can't get access to a doctor to write her a prescription, and has abusive parents, they took the coward's route out just as they did in the health care law
where they allowed private insurers to no longer cover abortions in order to get the votes of anti-choice Democrats like Stupak.
Many people are rightfully calling the Obama administration on their bullshit defense of HHS Secretary Sebelius's choice to overrule the FDA in their carefully administered study and recommendation of offering Plan B One Step as OTC without an age restriction. Please see the statement from NOW here.
NOW STATEMENT EXCERPT
Two years ago, a district court found that the FDA's earlier decision to limit access on the basis of age was motivated exclusively by politics. The court ordered the FDA to reconsider, and the FDA ultimately complied, recently deciding to make Plan B One-Step available over the counter to all women regardless of age.
It is an unusual and infuriating move for the Obama administration to overrule that decision, especially at a time when rumors are flying that the president is on the brink of caving in to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops by expanding religiously affiliated employers' ability to deny contraceptive coverage to women under the Affordable Care Act.
NOW calls on the president to stop playing politics with the lives of women and girls. During the Bush years, women's reproductive health was under constant attack. We don't need more of the same from the Obama administration.
The fact that Secretary Sebelius overruled a FDA decision is unprecedented. No other HHS Secretary has done this before, as pointed out by the New York Times. It's kind of ironic that we progressive activists are told not to hold the administration accountable on their policy mistakes as it would "embolden the right" but isn't this incident of pure political cowardice also emboldening the right's war on women? Women's organizations are rightfully calling this as playing politics with women's health, while conservative organizations like Family Research Council are praising the Obama administration for "seeing the light" and supporting their war on women's reproductive health.
Once again, what's more dangerous than the Plan B One-step? Teenage pregnancy.
The risks of pre-eclampsia, hypertension, placenta previa, anemia, low-birth weight, labor complications, and prematurity are even higher in teenage pregnancies than they are in more mature adult pregnancies. Even death from childbirth and death by partner is higher in teenage pregnancies than it is in normal pregnancies.
For those who say it's not politics, they're wrong because it is, and this decision by the Obama administration flies in the face of all scientific knowledge, studies, and reports on this issue. It's all about appealing to conservative swing voters, and this is what the decision really was all about as Jonathan Cohn over at the New Republic says:
But the FDA examined this issue, among others. As Maggie Fox of National Journal reported on Wednesday, Teva, the drug’s manufacturer, had provided the FDA with studies on 11- to 16-year-olds. “The FDA based its decision on years of data about adolescent health,” says Stanford University's Lee Sanders, a pediatrician and leading scholar on health literacy. “That includes research on the specific question of how adolescents will use contraception.”
Might Sebelius or some of her advisors be genuinely worried those studies are flawed – or, at least, not sufficiently conclusive? Sure. It's not a crazy argument. But is that grounds for taking a position virtually every leading medical association rejects? For overruling not just FDA staff but also the commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, who just happens to be one of the nation's most experienced and respected experts on public health? In Wednesday's official announcement, Hamburg made clear that FDA "carefully considered whether younger females were able to understand how to use Plan B" and "determined that the product was safe and effective in adolescent females, that adolescent females understood the product was not for routine use."
That’s why it’s likely politics played a major role here. Most likely, the White House didn’t want critics – like, say, the eventual Republican nominee for president – saying that Obama wants 12-year-old girls to have sex. Obama wouldn’t be saying that, of course, but when has that ever mattered? The concern probably isn't the Christian right so much as culturally conservative swing voters. Or, to put it more bluntly, the worry here wouldn't be Kansas. It'd be Ohio.
So much for being on the right policy side when it comes to women's reproductive health, eh? So many restrictions on abortion access......and so little time to reverse the damage that conservative zealots have done to that. It'd be nice if we could get some help from the top in overturning that, but nah.....
It's all about that swing voter they need. Yup, that's what matters more than a desperate female teenager facing an unwanted pregnancy that could have detrimental effects on her physical health, her education, and her future. Female teenagers younger than 17 can't vote, so there it is.