The FDA could permanently lift some restrictions on abortion pills

So is a kitchen knife, or a power drill, or a chainsaw, all of which can be bought in any hardware store or supermarket without special documents. There is a certain measure of simply letting people take personal risks that should be plausible and allowed in adult life. Antibiotics I can understand, because the resistance one creates within themself from improper use can affect others very badly. Likewise for opiods, which can cause people to lose personal control or coherence in situations such as driving down a highway at 100+ km per hour. For many other medications, the damage will be personal, and the choice should be as well. Your argument falls flat in the face of so many other things that you would also have to ban without written permission if prednisone or birth control pills were one of your baselines for prohibiting personal risk. Also, yes I know that prednisone is dangerous. I've been using it intermittently for a long time. I don't think anyone should have the right to treat me like a child on something so easy to learn responsibly.

On both counts you're taking rare, slowly forming problems and grossly exaggerating their severity or risk of happening. I personally know numerous women in my country who take birth control pills without a prescription and they're fine, and have been for many years so far. They simply follow the label instructions. I've been taking prednisone without an obligatory prescription on and off for a long time and know a number of people who have had to take it too, without any serious problems. They just follow their doctor's basic instructions on its use. The required-prescription craze in the U.S is indeed in many ways paranoid safety theater, a constant rent-seeking process that often justifies itself in the name of nebulous safety scares. People don't need to be treated like children to nearly the degree you seem to favor for what are usually completely personal health choices which don't easily affect others directly. Enough.

Tylenol has an extremely narrow therapeutic index and can easily cause liver damage.

Regular use of Benadryl has been linked to a 50% increased risk of dementia.

Both these drugs are available over OTC. Ok the other hand it would be pretty problematic if pain killers and antihistamine drugs weren't readily available, so maybe there are trade offs between safety and making useful drugs widely available?

It is all a matter of perspective, risk tolerance, and risk responsibility. This is in fact how it works an many countries. Without judgment, it is clear that the US takes a more cautious approach than many.

For example, you can get prednisone without an RX in Mexico for <$2