A Decision Everyone Can Hate

The really ridiculous thing about the Obama administration's cowardly retreat on Plan B is that there are so many different reasons to hate it.

For those of us appalled by the White House's tendency to combine bad policy with worse politics, it's yet more proof of incompetence.

Zandar:

I support the Obama administration when they make policy decisions I agree with. This is not one of them, and I'm calling them out on it.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the Food and Drug Administration’s decision Wednesday that emergency contraceptives be sold freely over the counter, including to teenagers 16 years old and younger.

The pill, called Plan B One-Step, has been available without a prescription to women 17 and older, but those 16 and younger have needed a prescription — and still will because of Ms. Sibelius’s decision. In some states, pharmacists can write the prescription on the spot for teenagers. But the restrictions have meant the pills were only dispensed from behind the counter — making them more difficult for everyone to get. The pill, if taken after unprotected sex, halves the risk of a pregnancy.

Under the law, Ms. Sebelius has the authority to overrule the agency, but no health secretary has ever done so, according to an F.D.A. spokeswoman. Her decision on an emotional issue that touches on parental involvement in birth control for teenaged children is likely to have powerful political reverberations in a presidential election season.

If this was a political decision (and there's zero doubt about that, frankly, because the science supported making this medication available) then it's a completely moronic one. There's no benefit politically for doing this. It overrules the available science. It's frankly a stupid move you would expect from a red state governor. The FDA said: "Hey, we see no scientific reason this should be done." Kathleen Sebelius and President Obama disagreed.

In a statement, Ms. Sebelius said that the drug’s manufacturer had failed to study whether girls as young as 11 years old could use Plan B safely. And since about 10 percent of girls are capable of bearing children as early as 11, those girls need to be studied as well, she wrote.

“After careful consideration of the F.D.A. summary review, I have concluded that the data submitted by Teva do not conclusively establish that Plan B One-Step should be made available over the counter for all girls of reproductive age,” Ms. Sebelius wrote.

It's an election-year punt, period. It's insulting, it's wrong, and it's cowardly.

Bad, bad call.

Steve M. calls bullshit on those who are surprised, and says it's not the bad decision it seems:

But this is at least acknowledging the real issue: Americans are uncomfortable with loosening restrictions on teen sex. If you don't even see that, then I guess this decision is incomprehensible, even as an act of political cynicism (or, if you want to put it more charitably, as a way for a vulnerable president to avoid expending political capital he doesn't have with an election coming up). But I say if you hate this decision, you have to be clear-eyed about how Americans think, and start working on changing their thinking. You can't just assume that most of the country sees things the way you do, or that voters in the middle are immune to the right-wing demagoguery that inevitably would have followed a different decision.

Digby sees the losers clearly:

I consider the decision to be cruel. Many, many teenagers are going to needlessly become pregnant and either have abortions or children before they should because of this.

Teenagers have always had sex and they always will. The only question for any government is whether or not to stand in the way of scientific advances that will prevent unplanned pregnancies. This government has chosen to do just that by proclaiming, in the most Orwellian fashion, that "common sense" should trump scientific evidence.

There's a reason why no administration has never overturned an FDA ruling. (Even Republicans were afraid to evoke a "common sense says the science is wrong" exception, although I doubt they will be after this ...) It pretty much pushes the door wide open for the government to overturn any scientific finding that doesn't comport with their political needs. I think we can see the dark implications of that, can't we?

And as you can see by that story above, everyone agrees that this is a political calculation. Sadly, it's one with real life implications for actual human beings. The status quo is that a lot of young teenagers face unwanted pregnancies. They always have. And that will continue despite the fact that there is a safe alternative for many of them that doesn't require that they go through hoops that make it nearly impossible to use. (Time is of the essence with this one.)More children of children, more abortions, more heartache for young women who have done nothing more than what young people have always done. It didn't have to happen.

Update: Oh, and the pro-choice Democratic women who are saying that they're keeping their powder dry for the "bigger fight" are fooling themselves. The opponents of women's freedom will not stop until they get everything they want. They know that every little victory like this is another advance in their long term agenda. There will always be another fight. If the pro-choice officials keep retreating they will wake up one morning and find that there's nothing left to fight for.

Those who think this decision affects only the "11-year-olds" the president seems so concerned about fail to see that this decision treats all women like children, as Katha Pollit explains in The Nation:

Who died and made Barack Obama daddy in charge of teenage girls? Would he really rather that Sasha and Malia get pregnant rather than buy Plan B One-Step at CVS? And excuse me, Mr. President, thanks to your HHS, acquiring Plan B is prescription-only not just for 11-year-olds but for the 30 percent of teenage girls between 15 and 17 who are sexually active, and is a cumbersome process for all women, who have to ask a pharmacist for it and, as many news stories have reported, be subjected to fundamentalist harangues and objections. Apparently, it’s okay with you if Michelle is treated like a sixth-grader. I’m trying to think if there are any laws or regulations affecting only men in which unfounded fears about middle-school boys deny all men normal adult privileges. Needless to say, no one suggests that underage boys get a prescription if they want to use condoms, or that grown men have to ask the pharmacist for them and maybe get a lecture about the evils of birth control and promiscuity.

This is politics. Pure politics. The Obama administration values the Catholic bishops, the Family Research Council, Rush Limbaugh and the swing voters of Ohio more than the pro-choice Democratic women who make up way more than their share of his base—women who campaigned for him, donated to him, knocked on doors for him, left Hillary Clinton for him. He must be assuming that we are captive voters—we have no place to go. That may be true, but there’s trudging to the polls and there’s passion. Obama is never going to get passion from anti-choicers and swing voters. And it looks increasingly likely that he won’t get it from pro-choice women either.

President Obama needs to just admit that once again, he's gone after repug votes he'll never get, and he's done it by once again throwing women under the bus.

Kevin Drum:

A group of Democratic senators has written a letter to HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius asking for the "specific rationale and the scientific data" she relied on when she overturned last week's FDA recommendation to make the Plan B contraceptive available over the counter. Greg Sargent posts a copy of the letter at his site and then comments:

This letter — which is signed by Patty Murray, Barbara Boxer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Maria Cantwell and 10 male senators — is strongly worded stuff, particularly when directed at a Democratic president. It stops just short of accusing the Obama administration of deliberately ignoring science in making this decision. It also puts the administration in an awkward spot. Either it produces a scientific rationale that’s acceptable to these Senators, which will will be extremely difficult at best, or it will face more criticism for failing to justify its policy, reinforcing the sense that this Democratic administration abandoned science and put politics first.

The first best option obviously would have been to follow the FDA recommendation and simply allow OTC sales of Plan B. However, the second best option would have been to fess up. This is what happened in 1998 when the Clinton administration decided not to endorse needle-exchange programs.

SNIP

In this case, the Bush administration deliberately tried to mislead the Post about the scientific evidence on needle-exchange programs. The Clinton administration simply admitted that it was making a policy decision.

The Obama administration ought to do the same here. There's a perfectly reasonable case to be made that even if Plan B is safe, the Obama administration doesn't believe it's appropriate to make it available to young children without their parents' knowledge. That's a policy decision, and everyone accepts that policy doesn't have to be dictated solely by science.

Sebelius would be well advised to give up on trying to twist the science and simply admit that there were other considerations at work. It might not make Plan B fans any happier, but at least it would be more honest.

Ya gotta admit that finding a way to make everybody on every side of the reproductive freedom culture war hate your decision takes a kind of political genius.