Trying to fend off a remaining legal challenge to the government’s restrictions on the morning-after pill, the Food and Drug Administration sent a letter to U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman in Brooklyn late Monday calling the motion “moot.”
U.S. Attorney Loretta E. Lynch noted in the letter that the agency had reviewed a petition by family planning groups to make Plan B available without a prescription and had concluded there was insufficient evidence to grant the request.
“Accordingly, plaintiff’s motion for Civil Contempt is moot, and for these reasons and the reasons set forth in defendants prior submissions to the Court, it should be denied,” Lynch wrote.
The FDA’s move was immediately condemned by the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is leading a coalition of family planning and health groups that had asked the court to find the agency in contempt.
“The FDA has once again come up with an excuse to treat the approval of contraceptives different from any other drug,” said Nancy Northup, president and chief executive of the group. “It is truly stunning the lengths to which the agency will go to deny women access to emergency contraceptives that have been proven safe and effective.”
The court challenge involves a petition filed in 2001 by the center and more than 60 family planning and health organizations in response to the initial delays in relaxing restrictions on the original two-pill Plan B. A hearing on the motion was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.
The good news is that 11-year-old girls having regular sexual intercourse is pretty rare. The 2009 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Survey reports that 45 percent of girls in grades 9-12 reported ever having had sexual intercourse. Breaking it down by grade shows how quickly the numbers rise: 29 percent of ninth-graders, 40 percent of 10th-graders, 52 percent of 11th-graders and 65 percent of 12th-grade girls report ever having had intercourse. Only 3.1 percent of girls reported having had any sexual intercourse before age 13. Pregnancy rates tell the same story. In 2006, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 3.2 percent of girls ages 15-17 became pregnant, compared with 0.7 percent of girls under age 14.
An 11-year-old girl at risk of pregnancy deserves every ounce of protection any of us can provide. The problem is that Ms. Sebelius, in overturning the best scientific advice available, has not done anything to increase protections for that very young, very vulnerable girl. At the same time, the decision limits access to a safe and effective medication for older teens at much higher risk of pregnancy.
I am not in favor of young teens having unprotected sex. I am in favor of protection — protection that ought always to include the full complement of parental, medical and social measures to keep our most vulnerable citizens safe. No teenager should have to face a concern about unwanted pregnancy without the help of a thoughtful and loving adult. Unfortunately, many of them do. It is a hard time to be a teenage girl in our society. Pressures are massive, messages about sexuality are harsh and suggestive, and protections can feel very, very slim.
This is not the time to engage in wishful politics. A decision that our youngest adolescents should have fewer measures to avoid unwanted pregnancy than those enjoyed by women with more power will not help young teens avoid pregnancy. It will not stop young teens from having sex, and it will not encourage parents to have more and more-effective conversations about sex and values with their children. It will just make pregnancy more likely.
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