'Morning after' pill is ruled available to all

Friday morning (April 5, 2013), a federal judge struck down restrictions imposed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on the age of women seeking access to emergency contraception. When taken within 72 hours, the levonorgestrel-based Plan B One-Step can prevent pregnancy after known or suspected contraceptive failure or unprotected intercourse.

Most requests for emergency contraception pills come from either older women in their 40s who didn’t think they needed to contracept or women in their teens or twenties, who lack knowledge about conception and often don’t use birth control reliably.

Physician groups like the American Medical Association, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, as well as FDA commissioner Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg have long recommended unrestricted emergency contraception access. However, in 2011 Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius instituted a prescription-only, ID-required rule for girls 16 and under.

Judge Edward R. Korman, a senior Federal District Court justice appointed by President Ronald Reagan over 30 years ago, ruled that the morning-after pill should be available over the counter for women of all ages. Judge Korman ordered the FDA to abandon sale restrictions on the pill, Plan B One-Step from Teva Women's Health, and related generics, within 30 days. FDA currently has no comment regarding the decision.

History of emergency contraception

From the 1960s, when the birth control pill came into wide use, women at risk of unintended pregnancy because of unprotected sex, rape, or contraceptive failure, relied on their health practitioners to order them well-known levo-based oral contraceptives, such as Ovral, in higher doses taken twice.

These pills were never marketed for emergency contraception, however, reportedly due to fear of protest and the resulting risk to the product line. The Food and Drug Administration first approved a two-step version of Plan B for women 18 and older in 1999, and a predecessor in 1998. One-Step won approval in 2009.

In making decisions about sex, today's American teenagers are much better off than their counterparts 20 years ago. Fewer teens are having sex now, and more who do are using contraception. Although teen pregnancy and birth rates have dropped, they still remain higher than in all other developed countries. About three of every 10 girls in the U.S. get pregnant by age 20. Among teenage women, more than 4 out of 5 pregnancies are unplanned. In those younger than 15, the statistic is 98% unintended.

Is "morning after" really an abortion drug?

Many of us do not understand the difference between morning-after and abortion drugs. Anti-abortion activists use the word "abortion" to describe emergency contraception pills, and also the IUD, which works in a similar way, because they believe that life begins at conception.

RU-486, or mifepristone, is not emergency contraception and is sometimes called "the abortion pill." This powerful drug, which can be used up to a month and a half after intercourse, may remove a growing embryo from the uterine wall, thus performing an abortion.

However, ECs never dislodge or disrupt an already implanted pregnancy. They work by either preventing fertilization of a woman's ovum by a man's sperm, or keeping a fertilized ovum (blastocyst) from attaching to the lining of a woman's uterus and becoming an embryo. This usually happens between 5 to 10 days after conception, when the blastocyst leaves the fallopian tube for the womb.

Based in Chicago, Sandy Dechert has covered healthcare for Examiner.com since the webzine's official startup. Involved in contraceptive science and technology since the late 1980s, she has also followed the creation and progress of health care legislation over the past two decades. Ms. Dechert's work also includes other top health stories, such as the 2012-2013 influenza epidemic and the fungal meningitis outbreaks, and incorporates a focus on sexual and women's health.

If this article interests you, please "like" it, share or tweet, and/or send me a question or comment! To keep up with the most current news, follow my new Sandy Dechert | Science Writer blog on Facebook (link here), or subscribe on this page and Examiner will email you when I publish new articles. All pictures and quotations here remain the property of their respective owners. To repost this report in part or completely, contact the author for a swift response at sandydech@hotmail.com. Tweet @sandydec for updates. Thanks for reading!