Three cheers for the Chilean Ministry of Health, which decreed on Saturday that all public health centers in that country are now required to provide birth control-including emergency contraception – free of charge to any Chilean woman over the age of 14 who requests it. The decree is part of a wider set of norms on sexual and reproductive health designed to bring Chile's health policies into better alignment with the international standards established at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. Hip hip hooray!

It's a pretty progressive step for Chile, where laws and policies on gender and women's health tend to run from conservative to ultra-conservative – divorce was illegal until 2005, and abortion is still illegal under all circumstances (including cases where pregnancy threatens the woman's life). But times are changing: earlier this year, Chileans elected their first female president – socialist, secular, single mom Michelle Bachelet, a longtime champion of women's reproductive and sexual rights. While serving as Chile's Minister of Health under former President Ricardo Lagos, Bachelet approved the morning-after pill for distribution through the public health system, in hopes that it would reduce Chilean women's recourse to unsafe, illegal abortion. At the time, several anti-abortion groups challenged her measure in court, and in August 2001, the Chilean Supreme Court voted narrowly to ban the pill.

A lot can change in a few years. As of Saturday, Chile now has a more progressive policy on the morning-after pill than the United States, where women under 18 still need a prescription to access it (since they're so much better equipped to handle unintended pregnancies than women over 18). The Chilean policy is logical: government statistics indicate that 14 of every 100 young people in Chile are sexually active by the age of 14. And if you're old enough to have sex, you should be old enough to protect yourself against unintended pregnancies. But try telling that to the FDA.

Of course, even in Chile, you can't please everyone… Senator Andrés Chadwick of the ultra-conservative Independent Democratic Union party was quick to react to Saturday's decree: "In our view, the morning after pill generates abortion-like situations, which is why it should not be distributed at all-neither to girls under 14 or over 14, with or without parental authorisation, or with medical certification." An excellent attempt at seeking common ground, if I do say so myself. And I'll leave you with this spooky comment from archbishop of Santiago Francisco Javier Errázuriz, who called the decision a blow to marriage, the birth rate, and the Chilean family: "I was hoping for good news for Chile at the beginning of the month of the fatherland [later this month, Chile will celebrate 196 years of independence]. But it is not good news for a country to be obsessed with contraception."

Bad news for the fatherland, indeed…