Debate on Selling Morning-After Pill Over the Counter

N Y Times ^ | 12-12-2003 | By GINA KOLATA

[buffyt]

Two panels for the Food and Drug Administration will consider early next week whether to allow the so-called morning-after pill, now a prescription drug taken after intercourse to prevent pregnancy, to be sold over the counter.

But unlike other more ordinary hearings for drugs like allergy medications to be shifted from prescriptions, this hearing has become entangled in the thorny politics of abortion, raising questions of when a pregnancy begins and who decides.

If approved, the drug would be the first emergency contraceptive sold over the counter. Known as Plan B — when Plan A, for contraception, fails or is skipped — the drug would not only be sold in drugstores, but could also be as available as aspirin, on supermarket shelves or in convenience stores or gasoline stations. The drug, essentially two high-dose birth control pills, can prevent up to 89 percent of unwanted pregnancies if taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse. But the sooner it is taken, the more effective it is.

[buffyt]

I seem to recall that one young girl died after taking this pill?

[NY.SS-Bar9]

I believe that was RU-486.

[RJCogburn]

I would say yes.

The death involved RU-486, an entirely different drug.