Judge Permanently Strikes Down Oklahoma's Age Restrictions On Plan B: The View from the Roasterie LXXXIII: January 27, 2014
Tara Cup-Ressler: Judge Permanently Strikes Down Oklahoma's Age Restrictions On Plan B:
On Thursday night, an Oklahoma district court judge permanently struck down a state law that prevented some teenagers from buying Plan B over the counter.... Gov. Mary Fallin (R) approved the measure last year, just a month before the Obama administration approved over-the-counter Plan B for girls of all ages.... [But] lawmakers aren’t allowed to address multiple unrelated issues in a single piece of legislation, and the emergency contraception restriction was tacked onto a law about health insurance regulations.... Despite the fact that Plan B hit pharmacy shelves over the summer, some women are still struggling to access it, thanks to ongoing confusion about the federal and state regulations regarding emergency contraception. And Oklahoma isn’t the only state to attempt to impose state-level restrictions on the morning after pill. Conservatives have been laying the groundwork to push for more state laws to undermine over-the-counter Plan B access, and this type of legislation was recently introduced in Mississippi.
I really do not understand the calculus here: (1) You don't want your teenage daughter to show up pregnant. (2) You don't want your teenage daughter to be sexually active. The first is--presumably--worse than the second. The links between access to contraception and sexual activity are not that strong.
So what is the upside? It really seems to me to be that abortions are better than teenagers planning how to avoid pregnancy...
