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A customer leans against the pharmacy counter at a store in Bentonville, Arkansas May 31, 2007.
Credit: Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi
By Jessica Dye
NEW YORK | Fri Apr 5, 2013 9:20am EDT
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make the "morning-after" emergency contraception pill available without a prescription to all girls of reproductive age.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in Brooklyn, New York, comes in a lawsuit brought by reproductive-rights groups that had sought to remove age and other restrictions on emergency contraception.
Currently, only women age 17 or older can obtain emergency contraception pills without a prescription. Point-of-sale restrictions require that all women present identification to a pharmacist before obtaining the drug.
In his ruling, Korman said the FDA's rejection of requests to remove age restrictions to obtain the pill had been "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable."
Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, hailed the ruling. "Women all over the country will no longer face arbitrary delays and barriers just to get emergency contraception," she said.
FDA spokeswoman Erica Jefferson declined to comment on the ruling, saying it was an ongoing legal matter.
(Reporting by Jessica Dye; Editing by Martha Graybow, Gerald E. McCormick and Lisa Von Ahn)
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Comments (3)
You know how sometimes new drugs come out, are approved, seem safe, and 5 yearse of so down the road prove dangerous with horrifc side effects? Cheers.
Plan B came out officially for the public in 2007, maybe you should have said 10 years instead of 5
@bobber1956,
What does your comment have to do with this article? If we were to use your logic, we should be skeptic of all medication in general.
