Morning after pill 'doesn't reduce abortion rate'

Providing women with the morning after pill does not reduce the abortion rate, new research has revealed.
The findings are another blow for the Government's disastrous sexual health policy, which has seen the pill made widely available in walk-in-centres.

Dr Sally Wyke, of Dundee University and director of the Scottish School of Primary Care, will today present the findings at the Social Dimensions of Health Institute seminar, a joint initiative between Dundee and St Andrews universities.

"Enthusiasm for distributing advanced supplies of emergency contraception may be misplaced as a strategy to reduce unintended pregnancy in the UK," the researcher will say.
"More radical solutions to getting it to the women who need and want it will have to be found."

Dr Wyke and her colleagues discovered that giving women the morning after pill in advance improved the service for women already using contraceptive services.

'No effect'

But it has had no effect on women not using family planning services.

The researchers gave five packs of the emergency contraceptive to almost 18,000 women aged between 16 and 29 in Lothian.

Around 45% of the women used at least one of the courses themselves and more than 4,500 women gave at least one course to a friend over the 28-month course of the study.

The women said they rarely asked for advance supplies of emergency contraception due to embarrassment and concern about being judged by health professionals as morally inadequate.

But Dr Wyke will urge health professionals at the seminar: "If advance supply of emergency contraception is to be successful in reducing abortion rates, professionals must address their concerns about emergency contraception and develop imaginative ways of encouraging women most at risk of unwanted pregnancy to take supplies home."