Resource: Tummino v. Hamburg

The Center has engaged in a more than decade long battle to make emergency contraception available without restrictions for all women. In 2001, the Center, along with the Reproductive Health Technologies Project and numerous women’s health organizations, filed a Citizen Petition with the FDA, urging the agency to switch emergency contraception drugs from prescription-only to over-the-counter status. Shortly thereafter, the manufacturer of the EC product Plan B submitted its own application to the FDA seeking to make Plan B available over-the-counter. The FDA responded to our Citizen Petition and to the Plan B application with years of unexplained delay. After four years of waiting, the Center filed suit in federal court against the FDA, alleging that the agency’s failure to approve Plan B for over-the-counter use impermissibly denied women access to EC. In July of 2006, the FDA finally acted on the Plan B application and Citizen Petition, announcing that it would approve the distribution of emergency contraception without a prescription, but only behind the counter at pharmacies and only for women 18 or older who could produce government-issued identification as proof of age.