The debate over the sale of over-the-counter emergency contraception rages on after the Food and Drug Administration delayed a ruling last month.
The FDA was scheduled to determine whether to approve sales of the morning-after pill, manufactured by Barr Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
If the FDA approved the pill, called “Plan B,” it would be available without a prescription at drug stores and pharmacies to women 16 years of age and older.
Searle Student Health Services offers the morning-after pill, a combination of two progesterone doses, for $20. Searle Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner Kathy Parker said she gives out up to 20 prescriptions a month.
The morning-after pill can reduce the risk of pregnancy by 89 percent if taken up to 72 hours after unprotected intercourse.
Emergency contraception may delay or inhibit ovulation, interfere with fertilization or prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine wall.
Some Northwestern student groups and professors support over-the-counter sales of the pill because emergency contraceptive gives women options when traditional contraception fails.
“You can’t always make sure your first mode of contraception is going to work,” said Lindsay Shadrick, president of the College Feminists, formerly the Women’s Coalition. “The morning-after pill is important as the next line of defense, as long as it’s not the only form of birth control people are relying on.”
Shadrick, a Weinberg junior, said the pill should be available more widely, provided that women are informed how to properly use it.
The FDA rejected a May 2004 proposal to sell the pill over the counter to women of all ages because it feared young girls would not know how to use emergency contraception.
Some opponents of the pill also question its dangers, but according to Marc Feldstein, emergency contraception is safe.
“There have never been any adverse health affects noted (from the Plan B pill),” said Feldstein, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Feinberg School of Medicine.
Feldstein said he opposes the argument that easy access to emergency contraception makes women more promiscuous.
“These girls will have sex no matter what you do,” he said, “so if you want to reduce unwanted pregnancy, you might as well give them an option (of emergency contraception).”
Voices for Planned Parenthood (VOX), a campus group that advocates reproductive rights, also supports broader availability of emergency contraception.
VOX president Ellen Stolar said emergency contraception is a “safe and viable option,” but should only be used in emergencies.
“I would feel safer knowing it was in the medicine cabinet of every bathroom in America,” said Stolar, a Weinberg junior.
But some students oppose any sale of emergency contraception on the grounds that it prevents pregnancy after conception and can be a form of abortion.
Ben Snyder, advocacy chair of Students for Life, said he is against emergency contraception for the same reason he opposes abortion.
“I don’t think there is any point from the union of sperm and egg onward where you can say, ‘At this second it’s a clump of cells, and at this second it’s a human being,'” Snyder said.
Snyder said the only two instances in which the use of emergency contraception is acceptable are rape and incest.
Reach Julia Neyman at [email protected].
