Teenagers 16 years old and younger would have been able to get the 'Morning-After' Pill, called Plan B One-Step, under new FDA guidelines. Currently, they can get it, it just requires a prescription and teenagers 17 years and older can get it freely.
Teva Pharmaceuticals would obviously love to have this sold to everyone they can, as easily as they can, but coming into an election year Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius likely was told this would be a bad move. Will HHS get painted as anti-science for this? Probably not. The 6% of science academia that is Republican doesn't have a big enough voice to note that Democrats are ignoring the science in favor of a cultural position - Democrats do not want to be enraging their own anti-science hippies who want to be involved in their childrens' medical decisions regardless of whether or not a pharmaceutical company is disappointed in its sales.
That isn't technically what happened, of course. Sebelius said that Teva had failed to study whether really young girls could use Plan B safely. Since about 10 percent of girls are capable of bearing children at age 11, those girls need to be studied as well, she told the FDA. Ooooh, a real science weakness there!
So there won't be the same cultural outrage there would be if a Republican administration had done this but, in truth, it makes no difference to girls and women. Studies show few women take the thing after unprotected sex anyway; 40% of births are unwed mothers and there are 1.2 million abortions per year and few of those are 16-year-old girls and under who could not get a prescription on the spot.
Critics of the new Teva marketing efforts are concerned that removing doctors from yet another medical issue left vulnerable girls more open to exploitation and abuse.
Despite negligible effects on pregnancy and abortion rates, the NY Times says, sales of emergency contraceptives rose to 4 million units last year, eight times higher than the 500,000 sold in 2004. Amy Niemann, a vice president of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, the maker of Plan B, said that the company had hoped to sell the product in pharmacies, grocery stores and mass market outlets.
Plan to Widen Availability of Morning-After Pill Is Rejected By Gardiner Harris, New York Times
