US health authority approves morning-after pill

By Pat Reber Aug 24, 2006, 18:15 GMT

Washington - After years of emotional debate, US health authorities Thursday approved the sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill without a prescription for women 18 years and older.

But girls under 18 will still need a prescription from a physician, the Food and Drug Administration said in a statement.

The medication, which contains a high dosage of hormones used in birth control pills, interrupts pregnancy if used within days of unprotected sex.

With the decision, health authorities ended years of emotionally- laden political debate that pitted women's rights and advocacy groups against religious conservatives who believe use of the pill is equivalent to abortion.

The right-wing Focus on the Family group said in a statement it was 'shocked' by the tacit approval of the White House for the medication because it will fall into the hands of underage girls.

'President Bush has a solid track record supporting parents rights but hes missed the mark with this endorsement,' the group's bioethics analyst Carrie Gordon Earll said. 'Selling this drug over the counter to any adult who wants to buy it virtually guarantees that it will end up in the hands of teenage girls without their parents knowledge or their doctors supervision.'

Two years ago, US drug regulators went against the advice of an independent panel that recommended the drug be sold over the counter. Usually, the FDA follows the guidelines of its advisory panels, and analysts suspected the White House was calling the final shots.

At the time, the FDA directed Barr Pharmaceuticals, which makes the drug, to either find a way of keeping young girls from gaining access to the pills or prove that they understand its use without doctor's guidance.

The pill, called Plan B, is manufactured by the Women's Capital Corp. (WCC), a non-profit company that developed the pill with the financial backing of such groups as the American Medical Association and Planned Parenthood.

The FDA approved the pill in 1999 on a prescription-only basis.

The approval process has sparked vigorous debate, with physicians from the extremes of the spectrum on contraception sitting on the decision-making panels.

Advocates of making the medication more accessible said many women cannot find a physician to prescribe the pill within the first 72 hours after intercourse. Most unprotected sex occurs over the weekend, when doctor's offices are closed, the pill's advocates have argued.

For many abortion opponents, taking the morning-after pill, which prevents fertilization as well as fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus, would be the same thing as the abortion of a foetus.

Bush opposes abortion and has cut aid to women's clinics in developing countries that even mention the word 'abortion', even if the US money had been used for family planning and purposes other than abortion.

At least 26 other countries - including Norway, Albania, Senegal, South Africa, Lithuania, Madagascar, France and Norway - sell the pills without prescriptions.

Used correctly, Plan B reduces the risk of pregnancy by 89 per cent, to the level of 1.1 to 8 per cent after a single act of unprotected sex, the company says.

The name, Plan B, implies what it means - that morning-after pills should not be used for regular contraception, the manufacturer said.

Plan A, the ideal plan, entails anything that involves thinking ahead - such as the daily preventive pill, condoms or other birth- control methods.

On a related issue, some anti-abortion activists also oppose the use of any chemical contraceptives and have put increasing pressure on pharmacists to refuse to fill presciptions for birth control pills as a matter of conscience. In some cases, pharmacists have been fired over the issue.