Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

The Daily Score


Plan B Soars in BC

Posted by Alan Durning
Emergency contraception in BC reduces abortions, unwanted births.

A new study by a researcher at the University of British Columbia shows that BC's over-the-counter policies for emergency contraception (aka, Plan B) have made a big difference. As the CBC reports, the number of BC women who used Plan B doubled to 18,000 a year after the province moved the medication off the prescription-only list in late 2000.

The researcher estimates that expanded access to Plan B has prevented about 200 unwanted pregnancies a year in the province. Of those, about half likely would have ended in abortion. Fewer would have ended in miscarriage. And the remainder would have resulted in unwanted births.

The CBC also reports that Canada is finally about to follow British Columbia's lead and offer emergency contraception without a prescription nationwide. It's about time! This step was announced last May.

When will the US Food and Drug Administration do the same?



Comments
There are no comments yet.

Add a Comment

Name (required)
Email (will not be published) (required)
Website
See a list of html tags you can use in your comment.
(required)
This check is used to prevent comments by spammers.


Sightline Daily brought to you by Sightline Institute.

ORGANIZATION'S NAME GOES HERE!!! It will be hidden by CSS; we need it only for hCard compliance.
1402 Third Avenue, Suite 500 | Seattle, Washington 98101 | tel: +1.206.447.1880 | fax: +1.206.447.2270