Action Item

Tomorrow, the Center for Reproductive Rights is taking the FDA to court "for ignoring a March 2009 court order to end age restrictions on emergency contraception."

At the start of his administration, President Obama declared that politics would no longer play a role in U.S. science policy, stating, "we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology." And soon after FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg was confirmed, she told reporters that it was her mantra to make FDA's decisions more "science-based."

So in March 2009, when the court ruled that the FDA acted in "bad faith and in response to political pressure" when it repeatedly and unreasonably delayed making a decision on Plan B and departed in significant ways from its normal procedures, it thought the new administration would "conduct a fair assessment of the scientific evidence." This has obviously not happened, and the Center is returning to the courts to make sure the FDA complies with medical and scientific consensus that says there is no rationale for age restrictions to emergency contraception.

The age of consent is 17 or younger in all but 8 states. Only in the fucked-up paradigm where young women are considered mature enough to have sex but not mature, intelligent, or autonomous enough to make their own decisions about both sex and its potential consequences, and only in a fucked-up rape culture where we diligently ignore anything resembling sense, can some tortured argument be conceived to deny emergency contraception to young women.

It is imperative that this restriction be ended. Voice your support of the Center for Reproductive Rights here.