After years of cajoling, protesting, advocating and pleading from women’s health advocates, Plan B, the most commonly-used brand of emergency contraception, has been released from legal limbo. Hopefully this morning after pill will now be able to spend the rest of its days in the friendlier, more accessible haven of the pharmacy shelf rather than behind the counter.
A federal judge criticized the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over its refusal to make emergency contraception available to girls of all ages without a prescription, saying the agency’s move to restrict distribution to consumers aged 15 and older was not realistic.
Here’s a brief cheat sheet on Jonathan Tropper’s literary oeuvre.
Jonathan Tropper grew up playing piano at a Modern Orthodox summer camp in the Poconos. No one thought he’d turn out to be the literary Next Big Thing.
Last year smashed records on reproductive rights — and not good ones. As the year that birthed the GOP “war on women” came to a close, the Guttmacher Institute tallied things up and found that of all the reproductive health and rights-related provisions enacted this year: “Fully 68% of these new provisions—92 in 24 states—restrict access to abortion services, a striking increase from last year, when 26% of new provisions restricted abortion. The 92 new abortion restrictions enacted in 2011 shattered the previous record of 34 adopted in 2005.”
Last week I was happily monitoring the news and reading all sorts of positive stories about how the FDA was poised to approve Plan B, one-step emergency contraception, for unrestricted over-the-counter use.
The Sisterhood Digest:
I read Sarah Seltzer’s recent Sisterhood blog post, “An Intergenerational Battle Over Abortion,” with interest. And I’m wondering if there’s any evidence to support her supposition that young women do support abortion rights, and their contributions to the movement are unappreciated. Aside from citing one young woman frustrated with not being appreciated at a NARAL Pro Choice America conference, Sarah doesn’t offer information to back her claim that the conventional wisdom is wrong.
When my neighbor told me that “Plan B” was the name he had picked for the sports bar he was opening, I just about choked. Until I told him, he had no idea that it’s the name of the morning-after pill; he went with the name anyway.