Adolescence and Health

While females have the potential to become pregnant as early as age 10, politically-driven regulations surrounding pregnancy prevention technologies set and affirm lines between adult and child which maintain practices denying those deemed "adults" rights, and further infantilizing them. This is the case with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's decision this week that maintains restrictions on young women's access to the Plan B.

The Washington Post writes that "Opponents of easier access, meanwhile, hailed the decision, saying relaxing the rules would have exposed girls and women to risks from taking high doses of a potent hormone and misusing the medication; interfered with parents’ ability to ...monitor their children; and made it easier for men to prey on vulnerable minors."

Oh, I get it.

Keeping these restrictions makes sense because unrestricted Plan B would surely encourage more men to prey on women. The only reason they don't now is because we have laws like these, which are also important because feeble-brained girls and women will, of course, misuse this medication. You know females and science! I mean, we regulate the shit out of aspirin and cold medicine and robotussin and other meds that can be riskily misused. Uh, wait, we don't? Neverthelesss, and most importantly, these regulations are important because unregulated Plan B could interfere with parents' ability to monitor their children. Their children who are already having unmonitored sex.

Young females participate in many of the same acts that older females considered adults participate in. This is the case with sex. It is not the act, itself, but the act tied to policies like these that influences the way females are able to exist in society. Policies can deny young people the ability to make decisions, to have control, to effectively address the unexpected results of the acts they take. These policies discourage adulthood. One such policy decision happened this week.

From The Washington Post:

Obama administration refuses to relax Plan B restrictions
By Rob Stein, Published: December 7

The Obama administration stunned women’s health advocates and abortion opponents alike Wednesday by rejecting a request to let anyone of any age buy the controversial morning-after pill Plan B directly off drugstore and supermarket shelves.

For what the Food and Drug Administration thinks is the first time, the Department of Health and Human Services overruled the agency, vetoing the FDA’s decision to make the contraceptive available without any restrictions. Revealing a rare public split, FDA Administrator Margaret A. Hamburg said her conclusion that the drug could be used safely by women of all ages was nullified by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

In a surprise move with election-year implications, the Obama administration's top health official overruled her own drug regulators and stopped the Plan B morning-after pill from moving onto drugstore shelves next to other contraceptives. (Dec. 7)

“There is adequate and reasonable, well-supported, and science-based evidence that Plan B One-Step is safe and effective and should be approved for nonprescription use for all females of child-bearing potential,” Hamburg said in a statement.

“However, this morning I received a memorandum from the Secretary of Health and Human Services invoking her authority under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to execute its provisions and stating that she does not agree with the Agency’s decision.”

In a statement and separate letter to Hamburg, Sebelius said she reversed the FDA’s decision because she had concluded that data submitted by the drug’s maker did not “conclusively establish” that Plan B could be used safely by the youngest girls.

“About ten percent of girls are physically capable of bearing children by 11.1 years of age. It is common knowledge that there are significant cognitive and behavioral differences between older adolescent girls and the youngest girls of reproductive age,” Sebelius said.

Her action means that instead of being able to pick up Plan B off store shelves, like condoms and spermicides, girls 16 and younger still need a doctor’s prescription to obtain it. Women 17 and older can buy the pill without a prescription but must show proof of age to a pharmacist.

The decision shocked and angered the doctors, health advocates, family-planning activists, lawmakers and others who supported relaxing the restrictions to help women, including teenagers, prevent unwanted pregnancies.

“We are outraged that this administration has let politics trump science,” said Kirsten Moore of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, a Washington-based advocacy group. “This administration is unwilling to stand up to any controversy and do the right thing for women’s health. That’s shameful.”

Susan F. Wood of George Washington University, who resigned from the FDA in 2005 because of delays by the George W. Bush administration in relaxing restrictions on Plan B, said she was “beyond stunned” by the decision.

“There is no rationale that can justify HHS reaching in and overturning the FDA on the decision about this safe and effective contraception,” Wood said. “I never thought I’d see this happen again.”

Opponents of easier access, meanwhile, hailed the decision, saying relaxing the rules would have exposed girls and women to risks from taking high doses of a potent hormone and misusing the medication; interfered with parents’ ability to monitor their children; and made it easier for men to prey on vulnerable minors.