Plan B Stays Prescription Only For Young Teenagers

Via Rheality Check, I hear about this:

For the first time ever, the Health and Human Services secretary publicly overruled the Food and Drug Administration, refusing Wednesday to allow emergency contraceptives to be sold over the counter, including to young teenagers. The decision avoided what could have been a bruising political battle over parental control and contraception during a presidential election season.
The contraceptive pill, called Plan B One-Step, has been available without a prescription to women 17 and older, but those 16 and younger have needed a prescription — and they still will because of the decision by the health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius. If taken soon after unprotected sex, the pill halves the chances of a pregnancy.
Although Ms. Sebelius had the legal authority to overrule the F.D.A., no health secretary had ever publicly done so, an F.D.A. spokeswoman said. Nor had such a disagreement been the subject of such extraordinary dueling press statements. Dr. Margaret Hamburg, the F.D.A.’s commissioner, issued a lengthy statement saying it was safe to sell Plan B over the counter, while Ms. Sebelius countered that the drug’s manufacturer had failed to study whether girls as young as 11 years old could safely use Plan B.

"Whether girls as young as 11 years old could safely use Plan B?" Are we then going to study whether girls as young as 11 years old can safely get pregnant, bring the pregnancy to term and deliver a child?

I understand what Sebelius is saying, though the quoted article points out that some drugs currently available over-the-counter are quite harmful to children and nobody has tried to turn them into prescription-only. I also understand that Plan B might in theory be worse for very young girls than a surgical abortion. I understand all those considerations and could write about them.

But because this whole thing is about politics the only proper way to discuss it is also a political one. Hence the importance of these sentences in the above quote:

For the first time ever, the Health and Human Services secretary publicly overruled the Food and Drug Administration, refusing Wednesday to allow emergency contraceptives to be sold over the counter, including to young teenagers. The decision avoided what could have been a bruising political battle over parental control and contraception during a presidential election season.

And this is what we should be thinking about! The first time EVER the Health and Human Services secretary publicly overruled the FDA! And it was about the question whether girls even have reproductive rights. Similar arguments have dominated the airwaves when it came to vaccinating young girls against the human papilloma virus.

All this is grounds for a bruising political battle which Obama wants to avoid. Making Sebelius do the overruling allows him to stay above the political fights in the place he prefers to be.