The Food and Drug Administration needs to get off its patriarchal ass on over-the-counter birth control

It seems that two smaller pharmaceutical companies are leading a fight to make birth control pills available over the counter. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is slow-walking the application process, allegedly being “cautious,” but taking a truly exceptional length of time in doing so. It catches my eye that larger manufacturers of such drugs are apparently not involved in the effort to improve their availability, but lacking an explanation,[1] I guess I’ll have to leave that for another day.

Because men do not so directly bear the consequences of pregnancy and because, as a society, we do not generally hold them as responsible, when we speak of abortion, where the Supreme Court, composed principally of men, seems posed to overturn or at least to severely curtail Roe v. Wade,[2] or we speak of contraception, we are inherently speaking of men’s control over women’s bodies. The onus laid on women and girls for avoiding pregnancy inescapably underlies this legitimate concern that the New York Times put at the very end of its article:[3]

“I know so many people that don’t read the box, that don’t pay attention,” said Jordan de Jongh, a 28-year-old data-entry worker in Houston who takes oral contraceptives. “So I could see a teen girl getting access to birth control at a pharmacy without having to tell her super religious parents; that’s awesome. But I could see a girl taking five pills and thinking she won’t get pregnant from having sex last night; that’s a myth.”[4]

The cure for this, however, does not lie in limiting access to birth control, which is inherently to essentialize women as their reproductive capacities[5] and indeed to enable that right-wing essentialization.[6]

As a society generally, with each generation, we imagine ourselves more enlightened than our parents. The birth control issue exposes this as a conceit. We still have a lot of growing up to do about sex, the very human need for it, and about its consequences.

And the FDA needs to stop with the bullshit stalling.

  1. [1]Kate Kelly, “Firms Push to Make Birth-Control Pills Available Without Prescriptions,” New York Times, December 14, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/business/birth-control-pill-over-counter.html
  2. [2]Ed Kilgore, “Is Roe v. Wade Now Doomed?” New York, May 17, 2021, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/is-roe-v-wade-now-doomed.html; Adam Liptak, “Mississippi asks the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade,” New York Times, July 22, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/22/us/politics/mississippi-supreme-court-abortion.html; Nia Prater, “Supreme Court to Hear Case That Threatens Roe v. Wade,” New York, May 17, 2021, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/supreme-court-to-hear-case-that-threatens-roe-v-wade.html; David G. Savage, “Supreme Court agrees to hear major abortion case challenging Roe vs. Wade,” Los Angeles Times, May 17, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-05-17/supreme-court-agrees-to-hear-abortion-case; Ariane de Vogue, “Mississippi asks US Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade,” CNN, July 22, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/politics/mississippi-roe-v-wade-abortion/index.html
  3. [3]Kate Kelly, “Firms Push to Make Birth-Control Pills Available Without Prescriptions,” New York Times, December 14, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/business/birth-control-pill-over-counter.html
  4. [4]Kate Kelly, “Firms Push to Make Birth-Control Pills Available Without Prescriptions,” New York Times, December 14, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/business/birth-control-pill-over-counter.html
  5. [5]George Lakoff, Moral Politics, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2002).
  6. [6]Molly Jong-Fast, “The Anti–Birth Control Movement Is the New Anti-Abortion Movement,” Vogue, July 1, 2021, https://www.vogue.com/article/anti-birth-control-movement

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