Teens, Contraception | featured news

A federal judge ruled Friday that the government must make the most common morning-after pill available over the counter for all ages, instead of requiring a prescription for girls 16 and younger. In his ruling, he also accused the federal government of “bad faith” in dealing with the requests to make the pill universally available, and said its actions had been politically motivated.

Pediatricians treating teenaged girls should consider writing just-in-case prescriptions for the morning-after pill, the the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said on Monday. It’s the second recommendation in a week from a major doctor’s group that would make contraception more widely available to women. Last week, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended making all birth control pills available over the counter.

Free birth control led to dramatically lower rates of abortions and teen births, a large study concluded Thursday, offering strong evidence for how a bitterly contested Obama administration policy could benefit women’s health.

Advocates for unfettered access to the “morning-after pill” Plan B One-Step took their case to President Obama’s chief science adviser Friday, asking him to find out the basis for the administration’s controversial decision last month to continue requiring that young girls get the drug only by prescription.

"It's a hard choice, but it's the safest choice and it's the best choice," she says.