For the time being, emergency contraception will remain by prescription only; the FDA has rejected the recommendation of its own expert advisory panel that EC be made available over the counter.
A spokesman for the Family Research Council declared
"The morning-after pill is 50 times stronger [than regular birth control pills], and yet over-the-counter access would have allowed women and girls to take this dangerous drug without any medical oversight."
Setting aside the obvious mathematical error in this statement (EC is not fifty times stronger than regular BCP; in fact, many birth control pills can be used as EC if taken in multiples), I eagerly await the FRC's lobbying efforts against permitting minors to purchase more than a single dose of any medication without a doctor's oversight. After all, we allow children to purchase 100-count bottles of Tylenol, which is of course potentially fatal if misused!
Seriously, claims that people will misuse EC are ill founded. As any woman who has been on BCP can tell you, taking more than the normal dose of hormones makes you feel really bad. Taking a quadruple dose as EC, by all accounts, makes you feel like utter crap for at least 24 hours; in fact, one of the major causes of EC failure is due to its causing such severe nausea that the pills themselves are vomited before they can take full effect. If any teenage girl gets the idea in her head that she doesn't need to go on the pill and can just use EC every time she has sex, she will be disabused of that notion in short order, and it will probably only take one lesson. If people are worried about overdosing, the danger is equally present with other over the counter drugs. Damn the FDA.
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