The Obama administration's decision to appeal comes despite a recommendation from the Food and Drug Administration to lift age restrictions and other scientific research saying the drug is safe and effective for all ages.

As the New York Times reports:

The appeal reaffirms an election-year decision by Mr. Obama’s administration to block the drug’s maker from selling it without a prescription or consideration of age, and puts the White House back into the politically charged issue of access to emergency contraception...

By appealing the judge’s ruling, Mr. Obama’s Justice Department is essentially renewing the objections that [secretary of health and human services Kathleen Sebelius] — backed by the president — had more than a year ago. In recent weeks, conservative groups had urged the Justice Department to appeal the judge’s ruling so that the contraception would not be available to very young girls.

On Wednesday, a Justice Department official said the appeal would concentrate on the two areas where the department believes the judge overstepped his legal authority. The official also said the White House had not been involved in the decision of whether to appeal Judge Korman’s ruling.

Reproductive rights advocates have criticized the administration's position on emergency contraception as overtly political and having little to do with science or women's health.

“Age barriers to emergency contraception are not supported by science, and they should be eliminated,” Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement on Wednesday.

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But there's a catch. Less than a month ago, the Obama administration was court-ordered to lift the age requirement entirely, by a federal judge calling them out for politicizing the process. There's no scientific or public health basis for any age limit -- the idea is that the morning-after pill be sold just as condoms are -- and requiring documentary proof of age presents a hurdle particularly for younger women and the undocumented. Also for no clear reason, Plan B will only be sold in places that have a pharmacy, as opposed to any convenience store, despite the fact that pharmacy employees will no longer be involved except with girls under 15.

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On Tuesday, the FDA lowered to 15 the age at which girls and women can buy the emergency contraceptive without a prescription -- and said it no longer has to be kept behind pharmacy counters.

Instead, the pill can sit on drugstore shelves just like condoms, but that buyers would have to prove their age at the cash register.

Earlier this month, a federal judge had ruled there should be no age restrictions and gave the FDA 30 days to act. The FDA said its latest decision was independent of the court case.

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This time, despite claiming he wouldn't talk to me, he stayed on the phone for 20 minutes to discuss, alternately angrily and resignedly, the massive backlash among his liberal customer base to his decision to sue the Obama administration over contraceptive coverage.

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It was Michael Potter, the Eden Foods founder and CEO. He was calling to respond to my Salon report from last week, which revealed that his organic food company -- which markets itself to a crunchy, liberal crowd -- was quietly suing the Obama administration over its requirement that his company's employee health plan cover birth control. Mostly, he said in the most amiable, avowedly Midwestern way imaginable -- at one point he called himself "a pretty simple guy, a Midwestern homemade-soup guy" -- he was calling to apologize to me.

It wasn't that he was upset about my reporting or what his company was doing. He was just sorry my request for comment had gone unanswered due to an oversight. I accepted the apology, and asked why he said he didn't care about birth control, since he filed a suit about it and all.

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The administration, said 2nd Circuit District Judge Edward Korman, acted in "bad faith" -- a phrase that arises again and again in the stinging decision. And Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius acted in a fashion that "was politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent."

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Women with reliable access to contraception tend to delay and space out when they have babies. And according to a new Guttmacher Institute review of more than 66 studies conducted over three decades, a woman's ability to control her fertility affects much more than just if and when she'll start a family; contraception plays a big a role in the financial, professional and emotional lives of American women, too.

In fact, access to contraception was found to be related to all sorts of positive outcomes in family, mental health, children's well-being and general life satisfaction.

According to Adam Sonfield, lead author of the review:

The scientific evidence strongly confirms what has long been obvious to women. Contraceptive use, and the ensuing ability to decide whether and when to have children, is linked to a host of benefits for themselves, the quality of their relationships, and the well-being of their children.

But, he went on to say, access to birth control remains uneven and unequal in the United States, which means that women who are economically disadvantaged or otherwise marginalized don't share in these benefits. Recommendations from Sonfield and the literature call for policies that ground "unintended pregnancy prevention efforts... in broader antipoverty and social justice efforts."

Read the research for a more in-depth analysis, but here's the short version: Women controlling their own fertility is a really, really good thing for the world.

Major takeaways from the review, according to the Institute:

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From the Associated Press:

U.S. District Judge Audrey Fleissig cited a provision in the U.S. Constitution declaring that federal laws take precedence over contradictory state laws.

Missouri's Republican-led Legislature overrode the veto of Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon last September to enact a law that appeared to be the first in the nation to directly rebut the Obama administration's contraception policy. The Missouri law required insurers to issue policies without contraception coverage if individuals or employers objected because of religious or moral beliefs.

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Brian Tashman of Right Wing Watch reports:

[Fagan] appeared alongside Tony Perkins, the head of FRC, on Washington Watch yesterday to discuss his article which claims that Eisenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that overturned a Massachusetts law banning the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people, may rank “as the single most destructive decision in the history of the Court.”

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The ads have already been harshly criticized for using these statistics to shame teen mothers rather than educating sexually active young people about where they can access condoms and other contraceptive care. But the subway and bus shelter ads aren't actually the worst part.

As reported by Miriam Pérez for RH Reality Check, at the bottom of each ad is the message: “Text ‘NOTNOW’ to 877877 for the real cost of teen pregnancy.” Text the number and you're directed to a choose your own adventure "game," which includes "scenarios about Anaya being ignored by her 'baby daddy' and shunned by her parents," but no information about how not to get pregnant. Instead, the texts use threats of social isolation, the prospect of losing your boyfriend and petty fat-shaming to drive home the message that teenagers who get pregnant are deserving of hardship and ridicule.

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A couple of weeks ago, Karl Rove went on the O'Reilly Factor to explain why he'd decided to run a campaign video attacking a woman who has not yet declared she's running. "She's going to get to know that she is not going to be able to wait until, you know, the screen writers from California and the producers could make her look good, and prepare the ads and give her lots of lines to memorize so that she can handle these things," he said.

O'Reilly had one question: "If you make her cry, will you feel bad?"

"No, I wouldn't," Rove responded. "O'Reilly, only you could be concerned with making a political figure cry. I mean, please."

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So what's he doing going on about a constitutional right to privacy -- the very backbone of Roe v. Wade?

As Kalli Joy Gray reported, Grassley was recently asked by a constituent about the government's "plan" to implant microchips in preschoolers starting in 2013. A rather bored looking Grassley replied:

No. First of all, nothing can be done to your body without your permission. It’d be a violation of the constitutional right to privacy if that were to happen.

First, let's address the semantic point that, in a country without legal abortion, forced pregnancy would definitely be something "done to your body without your permission," thankyouverymuch.

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There, amid jokes about “popping one out,” and “horrible little grubs,” was a "more serious conversation about their fears of relinquishing sole ownership of one’s own body." At least the authors of this Daily Beast piece asked actual women how they feel about childbearing, and the tensions between making a living, getting by in a city, and being treated like a "womb on legs," in the memorable words of one of the interviewees. Most of the other accounts have left women out of the story entirely, with the convenient but noxious result of waging backlash while appearing to change the subject.

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In an effort to standardize pharmacies' procedures for filling prescriptions for birth control, Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) have reintroduced the “Access to Birth Control (ABC) Act." It's the same bill the politicians tried to get through previous legislative sessions, but these two are clearly Charlie-Brown-and-the-football types, and are optimistically giving it another shot.

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The pope, in his own words:

On the church's sexual abuse scandal

The pope refused to open Vatican records to outside scrutiny and took little to no action against his bishops and cardinals involved in participating in and covering up decades of sexual abuse in the church. And, in an interview given before he assumed the papacy, then Cardinal Ratzinger argued that the public outrage over the sexual abuse scandal was really just an American plot to undermine the church:

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This is bad news for Teen Mom producers, but probably good news for everyone else.

Women in their 20s were also less likely to have babies than in previous years, and the birthrate among women in their their late 30s and early 40s actually increased, according to the report.

Researchers say that women in their 20s delaying motherhood, and the parallel trend of more women having kids in their 30s and 40s could be the result of a long-struggling economy. "The economy has declined, and that certainly is a factor that goes into people's decisions about having a child," CDC statistician Brady Hamilton, lead author of the new report, told Reuters Health.

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Rather than force religious hospitals, universities or charities to provide contraceptive and sterilization coverage, the proposal allows religiously-affiliated institutions to opt out, calling for third-party insurance companies to provide access instead.

But the compromise wouldn't let for-profit business owners weasel their way opt out of the mandate, requiring them to provide the "illicit" coverage. And that's a problem, according to a statement from Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the conference.

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As reported by Jessica Mason Pieklo at RH Reality Check:

House Bill 649, introduced by Rep. Jonathan Stickland (R-Bedford) would give for-profit businesses like Hobby Lobby a state tax break if they chose not to comply with the birth control benefit in Obamacare. Under the rule businesses that refuse to comply with the mandate face up to a $100 penalty fine per employee per day. Stickland's bill would allow those businesses to claim a state tax break for the amount it must pay in penalties, up to the total the business owes in its total state tax bill. In other words, Texans would subsidize for-profit businesses seeking to break the law.

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This year, only a few days into 2013, a Republican has spouted off about women lying about rape and our bodies shutting down pregnancy. States are at it again, and the House has kicked off the legislative session by trying to defund Planned Parenthood.

Happy new year, everyone: The  GOP soul-searching is over, and Republicans are back to square one on reproductive rights.

Today's congressman seeing to add his name to the illustrious rape-explaining pantheon is Georgia Republican Phil Gingrey, one of several antiabortion gynecologists serving in the House. “Part of the reason the Dems still control the Senate is because of comments made in Missouri by Todd Akin and Indiana by Mourdock were considered a little bit over the top,” Gingrey explained at a recent breakfast.

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During the year, 19 states enacted 43 provisions to restrict access to abortion services, whether mandating invasive ultrasounds, blocking health insurance coverage, shuttering women's health clinics or limiting access to the morning-after pill and contraception. The record for most restrictions was set in 2011 with 92.

The worst offenders? Arizona ranked No. 1, enacting seven antiabortion restrictions, and Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wisconsin followed close behind with at least three restrictions each.

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