Salon.com > Kathleen Sebelius

Judge rips Obama’s right-wing Plan B stance

Tue, 07 May 2013 19:59:00 +0000

"It turns out that the same policies that President Bush followed were followed by President Obama," said District Court Judge Edward Korman on Tuesday morning, in a charged and dramatic two-hour hearing in which the Obama administration defended its arbitrary policy to limit contraceptive access.

Korman was explaining why, when previously ruling on access to Plan B emergency contraception, he had initially waited for the administration to act on its own and make the drug widely available based on scientific evidence, rather than on politics. "The process had been corrupted by political influence. I remanded because I thought with a new president" things would be different, Korman said. But in 2011, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius overruled, with the president's explicit blessing, the FDA's recommendation to lift all age restrictions, which Korman ruled in March was a decision made in "bad faith" because of the politics around sex and contraception. He ordered the administration to lift all restrictions. Instead, it accepted a manufacturer's petition to make Plan B available over the counter only with photo ID showing the purchaser was at least 15, and the Department of Justice is appealing.

Judge overrules Obama to protect women’s health

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 18:50:00 +0000

Today, a federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan did for women's health what the Obama administration was too politically cowardly to do: Make safe, time-sensitive emergency contraception available to everyone, regardless of age. The shameful thing is that it had to come to this.

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."

Forget the theocracy, North Carolina

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:57:00 +0000

On your knees, North Carolina! On Monday, state lawmakers moved to declare an official state religion. The bill seeks to block any of those pesky federal restrictions laid out in the First Amendment.

As WRAL first reported, the bill is a response to a move by the ACLU last month against the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. The ACLU says the board "has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers," a stunning, defiant number. The new bill proposes that "Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion" and that "The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion." Shorter: nyah nyah nyah -- you can't make us stop talking to Jesus at government functions.

Obama says no to Plan B for teens

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:55:00 +0000

Why does Obama want your innocent little girl to have sex without you knowing?

The fear of an attack ad along those lines must have motivated the Obama administration's decision today to overrule the Food and Drug Administration's recommendation to allow emergency contraception to be sold on store shelves, and made available without a prescription to those under 17. There's certainly no explanation based in science.

In an extraordinary statement, FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg said she agreed with an internal study that "there is adequate and reasonable, well-supported and science-based evidence that Plan B One-Step is safe and effective and should be approved for non-prescription use for all females of child-bearing potential." But, she said, the secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, disagreed. Sebelius issued her own wishy-washy statement, claiming there wasn't enough data on the drug's effects on adolescents.