The Mourning After Drama Continues

At the end of our last episode, 24 days ago, U. S. District Judge Edward Korman had overturned the Obama administration's decision to deny girls under 17 access to morning after birth control pills without a prescription. The judge correctly noted that the age restriction contradicted the unanimous recommendation of the scientific advisory board of the Food and Drug Administration, which was in turn based on studies showing that adolescents had no difficulty understanding how to use the pills, called Plan B One-Step. The judge gave the Obama adminstration until May 6 to make the pills available over the counter to women of all ages.

Yesterday, the Obama administration attempted to compromise. They announced a change in the age limit. The pill will now be available without a prescription to girls 15 and over, provided they can prove their age. In addition, drug stores will be allowed to display Plan B on their shelves, rather than keeping it under the counter with the pornography. But this decision has at least two problems.

• Girls 15 and over must produce identification to prove their age. (The package will actually prompt the cashier to verify the customer's age.) For most people, this is a driver's license, but many teenage girls will not have a driver's license because they are too young, their family is poor, or they live in an urban area. The fallbacks are birth certificates and passports, but producing them would probably require parental help and might cause a delay of more than 72 hours after intercourse which would make the pill ineffective.

• The result of this decision is to increase the likelihood of an unwanted pregnancy, but only for girls 14 and under. This is awkward from both a moral and a social policy perspective. If we assume that unplanned pregnancy is the result of an unwise decision, it's not clear that younger girls should be punished more for their poor judgment than older girls. It's also pretty obvious that the younger the girl, the greater the disaster an unwanted pregnancy is for her personally, her child, and the society at large.

Strangely, the Obama administration announced that this regulatory change was not a response to Judge Korman's ruling. (Why do governments make such preposterous statements?) They also did not announce whether they would appeal the decision. I guess it's now up to the judge to decide whether he will accept these new rules. The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit, has announced that they will continue to fight against any age restrictions on morning after contraception.

Stay tuned.

Update (5/2):  The Obama administration has appealed Judge Korman's decision that must be made available to all females regardless of age.

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