Commenter Julie wrote the following in respose to my original post on this topic. I think it's informative, and she agreed to let me post it on the front page. She also adds, "Please check out the full report on the Morning After Pill at www.pop.org under 'Indepth Reports.'"
There are many reasons to oppose the morning after pill, including health and safety reasons as well as the fact that it sometimes acts as an abortifacient by preventing implantation. Many women would refuse to use the pill if this fact were made clear to them. Pharmacists should be given the right to refuse to sell it if their consciences object.
In the United Kingdom, the morning after pill is sold pharmacist-direct. Post-marketing surveillance there found a significant increase in the rate of ectopic pregnancies (6% as opposed to the usual rate of 2% or less). This is a serious health risk when young adolescents will have unsupervised access to the morning after pill if it is sold over-the-counter.
The most powerful arguments in favor of the morning after pill are claims that its use will prevent 50% or more of unintended pregnancies and thereby reduce the abortion rate.
This is not true as can be easily proven. In Sweden, where the morning after pill has been available over the counter since the late 1990s, teenage abortion rates have gone up from 17/1000 to 22.5/1000. In Washington State, the morning after pill has been available pharmacist-direct since 1998. Abortion rates there have not been cut in half. They are gently trending downward; however, the decrease coincides precisely with the nationwide decrease in abortion rates.
A study by Michael New proved that one of the major reasons for the reduction in abortions in the last few years has been the various laws restricting access to abortion enacted by various states (parental consent, waiting periods, etc.)
Finally, rates of Sexually Transmitted Diseases are skyrocketing wherever the morning after pill has been made available (Sweden and Washington State, for example).
Based upon experience of various states and countries already selling the morning after pill either pharmacist-direct or over-the-counter, it is most likely that if the morning after pill is made available over the counter in the U.S., there will be no reduction in unplanned pregnancies, a skyrocketing increase in STDs (especially among youth), and possible serious health risks which have not yet been studied, especially among adolescents.
This is a public health disaster of historic proportions in the making.
A complete research report on this issue has been published at Population Research Institute called "Under the Table."
What would be really nuts is putting the "morning after" pill over-the-counter while keeping birth control pills - which are essentially the same medicine but in a package more convenient for pregnancy prevention - prescription-only.
If I had my way, that would be reversed. (Actually, if I really had my way, nothing, except possibly antibiotics, would be prescription-only, but that's a whole nother issue...)
"There are many reasons to oppose the morning after pill, including health and safety reasons as well as the fact that it sometimes acts as an abortifacient by preventing implantation."
Which brings us back to the whole "what is a person" argument that we're not ever going to get away from until we come up with a definition that makes sense to most disinterested observers (assuming any actually exist :) )
My nomination is simple: if it hasn't got a brain, it isn't a person. More to the point, the brain is the person, the rest of the body is there to feed him data and nutrients and carry out his commands.
In 1985, the American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists re-defined pregnancy as beginning at implantation, rather than fertilization. Prior to this time, all scientists and physicians considered fertilization as the beginning of human life -- and many still do. Was the ACOG's redefinition politically-motivated? After all, many types of contraception have an abortifacient capability. By re-defining implantation as the beginning of pregnancy, the ACOG may have been attempting to assure that if Roe v. Wade were ever overturned, abortifacient contraception would remain legal.
At any rate, science is now in a state of schizophrenia concerning when life begins.
Human embryologists worldwide agree that human life begins at the moment of fertilization -- when the sperm and ovum meet. By the time implantation occurs a few days later, the tiny human already has undergone eight of the forty-one cell doublings that take place before birth.
Embryologists describe implantation as the fourth stage of embryonic human development. Look up the well-known Carnegie stages of embryonic human development. The National Institutes for Health has funded several online projects detailing the beauty of human development beginning at the moment of fertilization. One is the Visible Embryo project, at www.visembryo.com
Those who are of the Christian faith should consider that at the time that the Lord's unborn presence in Mary caused John the Baptist to leap in Elizabeth's womb (considered John's baptism), the Lord existed as a 4-6 day old embryo, probably still within Mary's Fallopian tube.
This tiny speck of His humanity contained all of His divinity.
(This is based upon how long Mary's journey took to reach Elizabeth according to most Bible scholars.)
The Lord sanctified the embryonic stage of human development as He sanctified all human life by His existence as a human being.
I realize these thoughts have no persuasive power for non-Christians, but hopefully they may provide something to think about for those who adhere to the Christian tradition.
I would definitely be opposed to having an over-the-counter morning-after pill. I am pro-life, but I don't believe life begins until implantation, so my anti-morning-after-pill position is based on medical reasons.
My dad was an OB-GYN so my siblings and I knew that the Pill is a prescription drug for a reason. There are certain large swaths of the population (such as smokers) who should not take this drug, and there needs to be a person at the gateway to keep them away from the tragedy that would occur if the wrong person took this medication in the wrong dose. While I realize that people may lie to their doctors (i.e. telling them they don't smoke, when they do) just to get the medicine they want, this is rarer than people taking a drug they ought not take.
One could counter this argument with the fact that cold medicines cannot be taken by large swaths of the population that have high blood pressure or other conditions. But most of these people have known about their condition for some time prior to the onset of the cold, and have had a chance to be informed by a doctor of the OTC medicines they should avoid. Smokers, on the other hand, most likely were not informed when they started smoking that they should not also take the Pill.
But they knew they smoked when they decided to take the pill. Smoking is exactly the same as the pre-existing high blood pressure example you give. People know they have high blood pressure before they take OTC cold medications where such a condition is listed as a contraindication. People also know they smoke before they take OTC EC, where smoking is listed as a contraindication.