Washington D.C., Jan 6, 2005 / 22:00 pm
A new study debunks the claim that making the morning-after pill available without a prescription would cut the number of abortions by half, says Cathy Cleaver Ruse, Esq., of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.
The study, co-authored by a Planned Parenthood doctor and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed a sample of more than 2,000 girls and young women, ages 15 to 24 years.
One group was given packs of morning-after pills and the other obtained them from a pharmacy, but the results were the same: eight percent of participants became pregnant and 12 percent acquired sexually transmitted diseases.
The study demonstrates that making the drug available over-the-counter would have no effect on pregnancy rates, says Ruse. “This study blows the lid off the main argument for putting morning-after pills on the drugstore shelf,” adds the secretariat’s director of Planning and Information.
The Food and Drug Administration is currently weighing a second request by Barr Laboratories to sell its morning-after pill “Plan B” over-the-counter without a prescription.
“Our message to the FDA remains the same: putting Plan B on the drugstore shelf is bad policy and bad medicine,” says Ruse.