“In a Cato Institute white paper, Director of Health Policy Studies Michael F. Cannon and I pointed out that birth control pills are available in more than 100 countries without a prescription. In a January 2020 Los Angeles Times column, we explained that switching a drug from prescription-only to over-the-counter status typically causes its price to fall. But don’t expect prices for the mini pill to fall soon. Because the FDA will only allow women to purchase this one brand of mini pill without a prescription, it will be shielded from price competition by rival brands.
Minors can buy lethal amounts of acetaminophen and ibuprofen without a prescription. Yet adult women must get a permission slip from another adult to exercise the right to contraceptive self-medication. And we other adults—licensed health care clinicians—think the requirement is preposterous.”
“For decades, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Medical Association, and the vast majority of practicing reproductive physicians have called for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make hormonal contraceptives (e.g., birth control pills) available over the counter (OTC) to women of all ages.
When experts in the field who get paid for prescribing hormonal contraceptives nonetheless keep telling patients, “You don’t need to see me for this,” government regulators should take notice. Women can get birth control pills OTC in over 100 countries, formally or informally, around the globe. It’s time for them to be OTC in the “land of the free.””
“This is not a new argument, and numerous courts have rejected similar challenges to publicly funded family planning programs, in part because the Deanda plaintiff’s legal argument “would undermine the minor’s right to privacy” which the Supreme Court has long held to include a right to contraception.
But Kacsmaryk isn’t like most other judges. In his brief time on the bench — Trump appointed Kacsmaryk in 2019 — he has shown an extraordinary willingness to interpret the law creatively to benefit right-wing causes.
This behavior is enabled, moreover, by the procedural rules that frequently enable federal plaintiffs in Texas to choose which judge will hear their case — 95 percent of civil cases filed in Amarillo, Texas’s federal courthouse are automatically assigned to Kacsmaryk. So litigants who want their case to be decided by a judge with a history as a Christian right activist, with a demonstrated penchant for interpreting the law flexibly to benefit his ideological allies, can all but ensure that outcome by bringing their lawsuit in Amarillo.”