14 DAY TRIAL // A new survey of pharmacies in three major city sprawls in the US – Boston, Philadelphia and Atlanta – showed that access to the morning-after pill, an emergency contraceptive measure, has greatly improved since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) passed on legislation in 2006, promoting the distribution of the drug over-the-counter, to people who are 18 or above.
"The sooner you take it the more effective it is, which is why availability is so important," said University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Dr. Rebekah E. Gee, in an interview to Reuters. She is also the lead researcher of the new study, which followed drug stores in the three cities in 2005 and 2007, respectively. During the first research, her team followed 1,087 pharmacies, while during the second they surveyed 795.
The degree of emergency contraceptive availability is crucial to the number of unwanted pregnancies that US women have to deal with every year, especially given the fact that statistics show that 1 in 3 women will go through an abortion in their life time. The team found that 23 percent of drug stores had no means of providing women with the morning-after pill within 24 hours, a percentage that had dropped significantly by 2007, when it reached 8 percent.
State laws play an important role in the way drug stores choose to handle the requests for emergency contraceptives they receive. For example, Atlanta state laws allow pharmacists to refuse to sell such medication to people, if doing so conflicts with their religious or moral beliefs. The rate of refusal was of 2 percent in 2007, whereas in Boston, where no such regulations exist, the rate was insignificant.
"There's no evidence that use of Plan B leads to more intercourse or riskier behavior, even though some of its opponents have claimed that. The data definitely show that that's not true," said Gee. She went on to stress the importance of the pill, by saying that its raised availability could help tackle the problem of undesired pregnancies in the country. That's why she also said that the pill should be sold to underaged women as well.