The Bush administration’s opposition to emergency contraception seems to be doing wonders for awareness and use of the method.
Health activists have promoted the so-called morning-after pill for 15 years as a way to reduce unplanned pregnancies and the need for abortions. But only now is it catching on, partly due to media coverage of the Bush administration’s efforts to thwart easier access to it.
“It has generated a ton of publicity, and that almost surely has a consequence of increasing awareness — and awareness is still the biggest barrier to use,” said Princeton University economist James Trussell, a longtime proponent of emergency contraception.
Annual prescriptions for Barr Laboratories’ brand, Plan B, have doubled to 1.6 million during the two years that Food and Drug Administration leaders have refused to approve nonprescription sales of the product.
Barr spokeswoman Carol Cox said, “We’ve had more interest from reporters on Plan B than anything else we do,” including Seasonale, the company’s new birth-control pill that reduces monthly periods to four a year.
There also has been fallout from the U.S. Department of Justice’s exclusion of emergency contraception from its first national guideline for treating sexual-assault victims. A coalition of medical and advocacy groups – many of whom helped develop the 141-page protocol – asked the department to correct the “glaring omission,” but the department has not responded.
Heather Cox (no relation to Barr’s Carol Cox), 31, of Tallahassee, Fla., took emergency contraception in a hospital after a neighbor raped her five years ago.
“I can’t begin to explain how important it was to my recovery that I was able to make a choice to protect myself from a potential pregnancy,” she said.
Emergency contraception – a two-dose regimen that contains the same hormones as regular birth-control pills – reduces the chance of pregnancy by from 75 percent to 89 percent, but only if started within 72 hours of unprotected sex. The constraint stymies many women who must find a doctor, get a prescription and have it filled.
The method has become embroiled in the politics of abortion because, while it usually prevents ovulation or fertilization, it may also work after conception, by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting.
Social conservatives also argue that making Plan B available over the counter would enable statutory rapists to cover up their abuse, expose women to medical problems, and encourage promiscuity and risky sexual behavior, especially by teenagers.
c 2005, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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