ABCs of Plan B: 'Morning-after' pill available in drugstores next week

[deadparrot]

An over-the-counter "morning-after" pill now being shipped to drug stores should be available to consumers by next week, its manufacturer said Tuesday.

The pill, Plan B, reduces the risk of pregnancy after unprotected sex by 89 percent. It initially was available by prescription only, but this limited its effectiveness -- the longer after sex the pill is taken, the less effective it becomes.

Last August, the Food and Drug Administration made Plan B available without prescription to consumers 18 and older. Barr Pharmaceuticals began shipping over-the-counter Plan B packages last Friday, and said the product should be widely available by next week.

There are nearly 3 million unintended pregnancies in the United States each year. On average, a woman has an 8 percent chance of getting pregnant after a single act of unprotected intercourse. Plan B reduces this chance to 1 percent.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/127700,CST-NWS-planb08.article

[silverojo]

1. Woo-hoo!

:kick: and recommended!

[Ilsa]

2. This is great news. Women shouldn't have to face the difficult

choices of whether to abort or carry a pregnancy when they have failures of birth control.

I was speaking with a friend today who was telling me of one of her friends who is very upset that she is pregnant again. They are married, he is mid-forties, she is 39, and their other three kids are all older. They are not excited about starting over again. And he is an associate pastor of a very conservative mega-church.

[Anakin Skywalker]

6. Mega-Churches are like Wal-Mart.

Overbloated and seem to be popping up everywhere.

[lindisfarne]

8. Morning-after pill often won't help when pregnancy is due to failure of

birth control. If the condom rips, you might have a clue, but there are many other forms of BC which can fail and you won't have a clue, and won't know to seek morning after. Morning after is more for unprotected sex (condom failure would fall in that category!), or situations involving rape.

Abortion is the answer for your friend if she doesn't want to carry the pregnancy to term, and adoption or keeping the child is the option if she doesn't want to abort.

And a vasectomy is the answer to keep this situation from cropping up again (assuming she only has intercourse with her husband)!

[jmm]

3. This is great step forward. Hopefully

stores will actually carry it and won't pull the same crap they have been over dispensing birth control.

[mom cat]

4. Rec # 5 for a greaat piece of news!

[Lugnut]

5. It's about time.

K&R

[NOLADEM]

7. Sweet....I am going to have unprotected sex with a stranger to celebrate !!!!!!

(kidding freepers)

[tanyev]

9. Will the fundies shut their pie-holes if this precipitates a

huge drop in the number of abortions?

[mainegreen]

10. No more good news! I can't take it!

My checks hurt from all the grinning!

[llmart]

11. The freepers heads must be exploding.........

how can they take all this "bad" news?

Tee hee.

K&R This has been a great week!