Emergency Contraception Debate

Today I learned about the Emergency Contraception debate and wanted to pass on some information. Emergency Contraception is the fancy name for what we call Plan B. Plan B met the criteria for being an over-the-counter drug, but because of religious rights organizations and a fuss from the political end, only women that are 17 and older can buy Plan B over-the-counter. Girls under the age of 17 cannot buy the drug. Not only that, though. Plan B is available, but only if the woman asks for it and presents an ID. This clearly presents a barrier to accessing the drug.

The International Consortium for Emergency Contraception has worked for years to make the drug more accessible and also change the negative perceptions about the drug. I remember when I was co-teaching sex education in Chile two years ago, my co-teacher said that one women take Plan B three times, they become infertile. This, I later learned, is completely untrue. Plan B is a hormone just like Birth Control pills. That would be saying that taking Birth Control pills makes women infertile. The International Consortium for Emergency Contraception has, surprisingly, been able to make headway with some religious groups to support the drug, such as All Our Lives and Catholics for Choice. It has also published with organizations like the WHO and the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) to produce accurate information about Emergency Contraception.

One other thing on Emergency Contraception that I must note is that the Consortium has done a lot of work to debunk the myth that women use Plan B instead of regular birth control. Several studies have proven that most women that use Plan B only use it one to two times in their lifetime. Also, most users are in their twenties and thirties, not in their teens like the media would like us to believe. Many stories and myths around Emergency Contraception exist because of journalists that would like to scandalize the public of teenagers taking Plan B. In any event, the debate around Plan B is interesting and worth reading more about.