The ‘morning-after’ pill

Plan B emergency contraception may soon be available to young teens without a prescription. Is that wise?

What is emergency contraception?

It’s a means for preventing pregnancy after an episode of unprotected sex or sexual assault. Throughout the ages, women have resorted to various ineffective—and often desperate—methods to avoid pregnancy, from postcoital douching with Coca-Cola to drinking hot mercury. The search for a safer, more effective “morning-after” pill can be traced back to the 1920s, when veterinarians realized that a dose of estrogen could prevent pregnancy in female dogs and horses who had mated against their owners’ wishes. Doctors adopted the use of estrogen to prevent pregnancy in a 13-year-old rape victim in the 1960s, and by the 1970s, oral contraceptive pills that combined estrogen with certain progestin hormones were used “off-label” as morning-after pills. In 1997, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first morning-after pill created for that purpose. In subsequent years, studies suggested that large doses of estrogen could raise the risk of cancer, so progestin-only forms of the pill were then developed—including Plan B, which was approved by the FDA in 1999.

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