Barack Obama Drops Plan B Challenge

Last month I wrote about the battle over Plan B, detailing the struggle between the administration of Barack Obama and the federal court system over the availability of emergency contraception over-the-counter without an age or identification requirement. Yesterday, the the Obama administration decided to stop blocking the availably of Plan B One-Step, after a federal appeals court ruled that the two pill formulation of Plan B must be made available over the counter to all women.

The administration had been challenging an April 5 order by U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman in Brooklyn, New York, requiring the medication to be made available without a prescription to all women and girls regardless of age. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s own studies found that Plan B was safe and effective and should be made more widely available as a means of emergency contraception.

The FDA has also said that making Plan B available over-the-counter is not a substitute for regular medical check-ups.

“Because the product (Plan B) will not protect a woman from HIV or AIDS or other sexually-transmitted diseases, it is important that young women who are sexually active remember to see a health care provider for routine checkups,” FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D. stated in an agency news release in April. “The health care provider should counsel the patient about, and if necessary test her for, sexually-transmitted diseases, discuss effective methods of routine birth control, and answer any other questions the patient may have.”

Yet despite those findings, in 2011 Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, ruled that the pill would be available without a prescription only to those aged seventeen and over, and it would be kept behind the counter in pharmacies, with identification and proof of age required to purchase it.

That marked the first time that the FDA – a regulatory arm of the administration – was publicly overruled by a cabinet secretary.

After the most recent ruling by the appeals court, the Justice Department – facing losing battles in court – decided to drop its challenge to that ruling all together, making both the one and two pill formulations available in the pharmacy aisle without any age restriction. To clear up any confusion, the morning after pill is NOT an abortifacient. It prevents conception if taken within 72 hours after sexual intercourse.

I support the administration’s decision from both a moral and a scientific standpoint. This may, indeed, be the lesser of two evils in an uncomfortable issue that we have an obligation as a society to confront. We don’t want 14 year-olds having sex, but if they do – and we know they will in many cases – we don’t want them having abortions, either. The increased availability of this pill will prevent that from happening. Allowing this type of over-the-counter access to the morning after pill is not going to make it more likely that teens will engage in sexual activity. The reality is that many young people are going to engage in that activity anyway, and this access will decrease unintended pregnancies, and in turn, abortions.

In this area as in many others, the best offense is a good defense – comprehensive sex education programs in our schools that give young people medically accurate information about sexuality, abstinence, and, if they are not going to abstain, how to protect themselves from disease and pregnancy. Ideally, parents would be discussing this topping with their children, but as evidenced by the high rates of STDs and unintended pregnancies among our youth, many young people are not getting such information at home. I think we can all agree that not all children live in an “ideal” home environment.

A report commissioned by the New Morning Foundation (NMF) – a South Carolina reproductive health advocacy organization – entitled “A Sterling Opportunity: 25 Years After the Comprehensive Health Education Act,” suggests that there is a critical need to reevaluate the CHEA and work as a community to ensure youth gain accurate information to make effective decisions about their reproductive health.

Twenty-five years after the law was passed, unintended pregnancy and the spread of HIV are still major issues affecting South Carolina’s youth. The sex-ed law, as written, has significant weaknesses that are barriers to its proper implementation. There are no objective evaluation processes in place to make sure the law is being followed as it was intended. There no mechanism to verify that sex education lessons are based on medically accurate facts and evidence-based materials or if personal opinions, religious beliefs and other non-scientific perspectives have made their way into the classroom.

The New Morning Foundation says that S.C. taxpayers spend nearly $200 million a year as a result of teen pregnancies. Its report states that “One of the most fiscally and ethically responsible actions our leaders can take today is to provide funding for effective teen pregnancy prevention programs that offer both comprehensive sex education and access to family planning health services. Simply put, these investments pay huge dividends, not only for individuals but also for society at large.”

A bill that would address this issue in South Carolina, H. 3435, is currently residing in the House Committee on Education and Public Works. It is the legislature’s attempt to rewrite South Carolina’s 25-year-old law.

Sponsored by Rep. B.R. Skelton (RINO-Pickens), the new bill would retain emphasis on abstinence education while requiring sex-education teachers to get training specific to reproductive health and pregnancy prevention, and requiring sex-education materials be comprehensive, medically accurate and based on scientific research. The bill reads:

All health education instruction must be verified and supported by research in compliance with scientific methods, published in peer-reviewed medical or health journals, be  medically accurate and objective according to leading medical or health organizations including, but not limited to, the American Medical Association, American Academy of  Pediatrics, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At a news conference in April, Skelton said the state must do something to prevent teen pregnancies. Those pregnancies keep young people “from accomplishing what they could be accomplishing in life” and “sometimes (create) a generational dependency” on government that costs taxpayers, Skelton emphasized.

Last month, Rep. Andy Patrick (RINO-Beaufort) proposed an amendment to the bill that would water down the original definition of “medically accurate” to include information that has not been accepted by the medical or scientific community in peer-reviewed journals:

’Medically accurate information’ means information that has been supported by peer-reviewed research which complies with accepted scientific methods, published in or by  medical, scientific, psychological, sociological, government or public health publications, organizations or agencies, or information presented or provided by a reputable  organization or agency which has expertise relating to sexual health. (section 1, paragraph 9).

Passing that amendment would be a mistake. If we are to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions, young people need scientific facts in this area, not unproven opinion.

The Obama administration and the court system have made the right decision regarding the availability of Plan B. Those who believe that easier access to emergency contraception will lead to an increase in teen sex are closing their eyes to the reality that teens are already having sex. If we have a tool that can help prevent unintended pregnancies – and by extension, abortions – we should use it. It is also my hope that the SC legislature will pas H3435 without Rep. Patrick’s anti-science amendment, thus using another tool – comprehensive sexual health education – to help prevent the need for emergency contraception in the first place.

Amy Lazenby is the associate opinion editor at FITSNews. She is a wife, mother of three and small business owner with her husband who splits her time between South Carolina and Georgia. Follow her on Twitter @Mrs_Laz.

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