Abortion Rates Not Falling from Morning After Pill

Ivanhoe Newswire
Friday, September 15, 2006; 12:00 AM

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Emergency contraception, or Plan B, can effectively prevent pregnancy, provided you take the pills 72 hours of sexual intercourse.

Emergency contraception can help some women prevent pregnancy some of the time, but it won't prevent all women from getting pregnant all of the time. At least that's the opinion of Professor Anna Glaser from the Lothian Primary Care NHS Trust in Edinburgh, England. Her editorial appears in this week's British Medical Journal.

Despite the gradually increasing availability of emergency contraception, abortion rates are on the rise. In 1984 the abortion rate in England was 11 abortions per 1,000 women -- totaling 138,388. In 2004 the figure was 17.8 abortions per 1,000 women -- or 185,400 women.

In the U.K., requests for abortions have grown from 1 percent of women in 1984, to 6 percent in 1996, to 12 percent in 2002.

Ten different studies carried out in different countries revealed giving women a supply of emergency contraception to keep at home increased its use by twofold or threefold but had no measurable effect on rates of pregnancy or abortion.

Researchers believe one reason for this surprising trend is women don't always use the supply of emergency contraception they have on hand because they simply don't realize they had put themselves at risk of pregnancy.

In August of this year, the U.S. FDA approved over-the-counter sales of Plan B for people ages 18 and older. Until that point it had been available by prescription only.

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SOURCE: The British Medical Journal, 2006;333:560-561