You might have thought this post was via my Progress Women partner, Emily Spangler who will be a high school sophomore. But I get this issue too, particularly as a mom to a college daughter.
Recently I ate brunch in D.C. in the same restaurant right next to Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary. It was all I could do not to go over and interrupt her and her party to ask her why she fell for this inane policy on emergency contraception.
We are ALL tired of the politics that KEEP swirling around women’s access to safe and legal birth control, especially when doctors, scientists and the FDA tell us it’s perfectly fine.
Thank you Hannah for speaking up and saying what most of us are thinking.
photo courtesy of Shutterstock
by Hannah Weintraub for RH Reality Check
I’m at that age when so many adults just don’t get my life.
While I often use this complaint too liberally, I find that the Obama administration’s attempts to restrict access to emergency contraception on the basis of age fail to recognize the true challenges and realities of being a teenager. Telling teenagers to fork over photo identification before accessing emergency contraception means they simply don’t “get” us and our real lives.
While I have jokingly griped and groaned over the age limits on buying lottery tickets and drinking alcohol, these are parameters that, honestly, I can live with. More life threatening is the age restriction pushed by the Obama administration for emergency contraception. Unveiled in late April, the plan made emergency contraception available over-the-counter only for people ages 15 and up.
On Wednesday, the administration lost that battle, in part, when the Food and Drug Administration was ordered to immediately make two-dose emergency contraception available over-the-counter without an age restriction. The administration is continuing to appeal age restrictions for one-dose emergency contraception, like Plan B One-Step.
Why would the Obama administration support such restrictions, which not only put the health and lives of young women at risk, but also further disable young women from taking control of our sexuality with the empowerment and liberation that many of us wish for?
Placing an age limit on emergency contraception is simply discrimination. For example, while the administration’s plan allows women age 15 and up to purchase emergency contraception, it says that a store clerk must first verify a woman’s age before she is allowed to buy the drug. For many but not all adults, proof of age is a non-issue if they have driver’s licenses or state-issued identification at the ready.
But let’s be real: Many 15-year-olds, and for that matter women of all ages, do not have licenses, permits, or other forms of easily accessible government identification. In Maryland, where I live, teens can’t apply for a learner’s permit until they are 15 years and nine months old.
If my own experience is any judge, I was late in getting my permit and then promptly lost it for a stretch of time. Under the rule the Obama administration wanted to impose, my mistake would require me to lug in a passport or a birth certificate to get completely safe and time-sensitive medicine. Digging through documents is not always practical when emergency contraception should be taken as soon as possible for maximum effectiveness. READ MORE OF HANNAH’S RESPONSE HERE.