Some editorials and an opinion piece respond to a July 31 letter to Barr Laboratories' subsidiary Duramed Research from FDA in which acting FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach wrote that the agency is reconsidering the company's application to allow Barr's emergency contraceptive to be sold without a prescription to girls and women ages 16 and older. The letter says that 18 is the "appropriate age" to allow women to buy Plan B without a prescription and asks Barr to raise the age restriction in its application from 16 to 18. The letter also requests that Barr meet with FDA within seven days, make unspecified changes to the packaging for Plan B and provide a thorough description of the company's plan to enforce the age restriction. FDA spokesperson Susan Bro said that Barr and FDA are scheduled to meet on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to discuss the application (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 8/3). The editorials also respond to von Eschenbach's confirmation hearings in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which began one day after the letter was sent to Barr. During the hearing, committee members questioned him regarding the agency's review of the application (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 8/2). Summaries appear below.

Editorials

• South Florida Sun-Sentinel: "Politics are still at play" regarding the application for nonprescription sales of Plan B, a Sun-Sentinel editorial says. Von Eschenbach will have to make a decision on the application before a vote on his confirmation is held, a Sun-Sentinel editorial says, adding, "How he acts will be a telling sign of how he would lead" FDA -- "with integrity or as a political tool" (South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 8/7).
  


• Salt Lake Tribune: "It's doubtful a young woman might decide to have sex based on whether or not she has ready access to Plan B" because "[t]eenage sex is more about hormones than rational thought," a Tribune editorial says. "Requiring those younger than 18 to have a prescription makes the drug legally unavailable to vulnerable girls whose lives would be most threatened by pregnancy," the editorial says, concluding, "Plan B is not an abortive drug; to the contrary, its use would prevent many abortions. Who, honestly, can oppose that?" (Salt Lake Tribune, 8/6).

Opinion Piece

• David Ulin, Los Angeles Times: "We live in a culture that doesn't want to own up" to the fact that "tak[ing] responsibility for yourself and act[ing]" are "part of what it means to be an adult" and that "wants some vaguely parental-style authority -- God, the government, even science -- to tell us what to do," Times book editor Ulin writes in an opinion piece. "That's what the ongoing debate over reproductive freedom misses: that you can't legislate morality, that being an adult means measuring pros and cons, compromising, deciding what you can bear and what you can't," Ulin writes, adding, "In the end, it's a matter of personal, as opposed to social, conscience, a conversation we each must have with ourselves" (Ulin, Los Angeles Times, 8/7).