OTC emergency contraceptives pushed, but not imminent

Medicine's widespread support for greater access to emergency contraception won't be enough to change its status from prescription only.

By Vida Foubister, AMNews staff. March 5, 2001.

More than 60 medical and reproductive rights groups petitioned the Food and Drug Administration last month to make emergency contraceptives available over the counter.

"It's a public health no-brainer," explained Bonnie Scott Jones, staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, which wrote the petition. "You're not doing any harm by making it available and you can significantly reduce unintended pregnancies, which have all kinds of bad health and societal ramifications."

Among the petitioners are the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Women's Assn., the American Public Health Assn. and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

The American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also support this change, but they did not formally sign the group petition.

David W. Kaplan, MD, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on adolescence, said that the potential to have over-the-counter access to emergency contraception is "one of the most exciting things that has occurred in contraceptive technology for years." This is particularly true for teenagers who often don't plan on having sex and therefore aren't taking regular contraception when they do, he said.

"Although most adolescents go to see a doctor from time to time, it's usually around having a sore throat, strep, upper respiratory tract infection -- those kinds of common acute illnesses," Dr. Kaplan said. "To think that they would, over the phone, be able to ask their pediatrician for emergency contraception is unrealistic. They would be too embarrassed to do that." [...]