A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel is meeting Tuesday and Wednesday to consider a request from French company HRA Pharma for its birth control pill called Opill.
Hormone-based birth control has required a prescription, usually so providers can screen for risk of rare blood clots. But over-the-counter (OTC) birth control is available in more than 100 countries worldwide.
Opill — also known as a minipill — only contains progestin, rather than the combination of progestin and estrogen, so it reduces the clotting risk. Still, the combination pill is more effective than the minipill, and the vast majority of consumers who use oral birth control pills use the combination pill.
Robin Watkins, senior director of health care for Power to Decide, said it's long overdue for birth control to be available over-the-counter. She said people of color and people who live in rural, underserved communities would benefit most.
Currently, they face enormous barriers like finding child care, taking time off work and traveling long distances to see a provider, she said.
"That means that a year from now, someone living in a contraceptive desert, they would have access to a highly effective method of birth control that they would not otherwise have had access to before. And that gives people the availability to make decisions about whether to get pregnant or not, how to manage their health, and to be able to do that on their own terms and timeline," Watkins said.
A year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to an abortion, reproductive health has been under political and legal attack. Contraception hasn't garnered as much pushback, but advocates note threats to access are a constant fear.
A Texas federal judge in December ruled that federal clinics that confidentially distribute contraception to teens violate Texas state law and U.S. constitutional rights.
And Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the Supreme Court "should reconsider" its past rulings codifying the right to contraception access.
Many of the leading anti-abortion groups haven't taken a stance, but major Catholic groups, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are arguing against over-the-counter access to contraceptives. They argue that teens and young adults should need parental and provider permission.
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