Federal regulators Thursday approved the first over-the-counter daily birth control pill available in the U.S., and why do I feel that Republicans won't like oral contraceptives easier to obtain? Well, probably because in 2022, 195 House Republicans voted against the Right to Contraception Act. Banning abortion was never about children with Republicans. It's about control.
The Washington Post reports:
Federal regulators Thursday approved the first over-the-counter daily birth control pill available in the United States, a milestone in decades-long efforts to make oral contraceptives easier to obtain, especially by teenagers and women who don't regularly see a doctor.
The Food and Drug Administration's approval of Opill, made by the consumer health giant Perrigo, comes six decades after birth control pills were introduced in the United States, drastically changing the lives of countless women and American society. And it means the country will join about 100 other nations that allow the sale of nonprescription birth control pills.
Health experts, citing the pill's lengthy record of safety and effectiveness, have pushed for a nonprescription pill for years, but their campaign took on new urgency after the Supreme Court last year struck down the fundamental right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade.
"It's a transformative change in contraceptive access and reproductive health," said Victoria Nichols, project director of Free the Pill, a coalition of dozens of groups working for over-the-counter birth control pills in the United States.
Opill will be available early next year without needing a prescription -- unless Republicans screw this up somehow.
