Hey, look, Democrats rediscovered contraceptives!
F.D.A. to Weigh Over-the-Counter Sale of Contraceptive Pills
More than 60 years after the approval of oral contraceptives revolutionized women’s sexual health, the Food and Drug Administration has received its first application to supply a birth control pill over the counter — just as the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has put access to contraception more squarely at the heart of the clash over reproductive rights.
What clash regarding contraceptives? Republicans have been saying for most of this century that abortion and abortion pills are not contraceptives, that men and women should practice responsible, protected sex.
A Paris-based company, HRA Pharma, said it will announce on Monday that it has asked the F.D.A. to authorize its pill, which is available by prescription, for over-the-counter-sales in the United States. Cadence Health, another pill manufacturer that has been in close dialogue with the F.D.A. about switching its pill to over-the-counter status, said it hopes to move closer to submitting an application in the coming year.
The timing of HRA Pharma’s F.D.A. submission, just weeks after the Supreme Court decision, is “a really sad coincidence,” said Fre?de?rique Welgryn, the company’s chief strategic and innovations officer. “Birth control is not a solution for abortion access,” she said.
Well, actually, it is, because if you practice protected sex you don’t get pregnant. It’s 2022, these things are pretty advanced, and we have some very good scientific knowledge.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which struck down Roe and eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, included a concurring decision by Justice Clarence Thomas suggesting that the 1965 decision that established a right to contraception should also be overturned. On Friday, President Biden denounced the Dobbs ruling as “an exercise in raw political power,” and vowed to expand access to reproductive health care.
First, he’s just one judge, none of the others are saying the same thing. Second, there’s zero suits in the courts that could work their way to the Supreme Court. Third, he wrote ““In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” What he meant was that the Supreme Court shouldn’t invent a Right where none exists in the Constitution. That it should be the Legislative Branch which can pass a law on this. The rest of the court is not interested in doing this, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh adding in his concurrence, “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
Supporters of reproductive rights are also calling on Mr. Biden to have the F.D.A. move quickly on its review of over-the-counter contraceptives in light of the Dobbs decision. Dana Singiser, a founder of the Contraceptive Access Initiative, a nonprofit advocacy group, said the experience with Covid-19 shows that the F.D.A. “can work with urgency during a public health emergency, which is what women are facing right now with the overturning of Roe v. Wade.”
Of course, Biden is not interested in being involved. Like with most things.
Roughly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. Reproductive-rights activists view an over-the-counter birth control pill as an easy and effective tool for women in rural, poor and historically marginalized communities to avoid unwanted pregnancies, which in turn reduces the abortion rate.
Word salad included. If you’re having unprotected, irresponsible sex, why are you surprised when you get pregnant? If you drive like a fool, wearing no seat belt, why are you surprised when you get seriously hurt?
Long, long article, but, the question here is “will Democrats push to stop this?”
(USA Today) Most American women favor making the birth control pill accessible over the counter. According to a 2017 Kaiser Family Foundation survey, three-quarters of women of reproductive age support over-the-counter access to birth control pills.
So why hasn’t it happened? It must be that awful, religious-right-dominated GOP that’s standing in the way, right?
Actually, not so much.
Republicans, in fact, have repeatedly tried to make birth control pills available without a prescription, only to face opposition from . . . Democrats and Planned Parenthood.
Easily obtained contraceptives would interfere with all the money PP makes off abortions and insurance money rake off, and, if there are fewer abortion Democrats cannot yammer on about the “right to an abortion.”
Planned Parenthood is also a big donor to Democrats, who have worked to block over-the-counter birth control pills. And Democrats have fought hard, partly because they — and drug companies — want birth control pills to be subject to health insurance reimbursement, though only the more privileged among Americans get that.
Will Dems block the approval at the FDA?
Read: In Wake Of End Of Roe, FDA Considers OTC Birth Control Pills »
Scientists at MIT think they may have finally found a way to reverse climate change. Or, at the least, help ease it some.
As inflation continues to impact working-class Americans across the country, 
What a difference an administration makes.
Building wind and solar farms is an important part of building a new green grid, but a calm night stops their energy generation cold. It’s just as important to research and build green energy storage — and to that at scale requires federal intervention as soon as possible, suggests a new report from MIT.
