May 02, 2005

The "morning after pill" : Mayor Bloomberg gets it and Canada too.
by Liza Sabater

This is one of the biggest reasons why I'd vote for him ... if I so did not hate his obsession with the abomination he wants to implant on the city's West Side in the form of a new Stadium. I mean, why Manhattan? Why not Brooklyn?

But he gets it. He gets that the better alternative to an abortion is contraception : Not just putting barriers between semen and ovii in the form of a condom; not just supressing fertility in the form of a pill. Contraception has to happen also at the level of suppression of conception. So if there is any reason to believe that condom broke; you just pop one of those suckers and stop all possibility of conception.

wnbc.com - Health - Bloomberg Announces Initiative To Promote Contraceptive Pills

NEW YORK -- Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pledged $1 million in public funding to promote emergency contraceptive pills at city hospitals.

Bloomberg announced the program Thursday at a meeting of the National Abortion Rights Action League, which was honoring him for creating an abortion training program for doctors in 2001.

Under the initiative, doctors would be urged to write advance prescriptions for the contraceptives -- also known as "morning after" pills -- so that women could keep a supply ready if they need them.

Bloomberg, speaking Friday on his weekly WABC radio show, likened the pills to birth-control pills, and said he hoped they would contribute to a decrease in the 90,000 abortions performed in the city every year.

"Ninety-thousand abortions is an outrage," he said. "We should recognize this is a problem."

There's no reason why a girl or a woman should wait for conception to happen and then have an abortion when Plan B is a safe and sane option. I have used it and am happy with not just the effects but the results. I cannot take the pill on a long term basis. So it's been wonderful to have known that for the two scares I had, I did not have to wait and see if I was pregnant --I could just take those two suckers and kiss the thought of an abortion goodbye.

Plan B is not an abortive; it is a contraceptive remedy. It's basically a massive dose of the hormones found in contraceptive pills to begin with. That's why you need to have that hormonal blast during the first 3 days "after the condom broke". The hormonal blast will stay long enough to counter any possible conception.

That's why now Canada has decided to go ahead and offer the pills over the counter :

CBC News: Morning-after pill will be available without prescription across Canada

"Women facing an emergency need timely access to this type of therapy," Health Minister Pierre Pettigrew said in a statement Tuesday. "Making the drug available in pharmacies without a prescription will help women to prevent unwanted pregnancies."

Unfortunately, women will still need to ask a pharmacist for the drug :

Under a proposed change to Canada's drug regulations, pharmacists would be allowed to sell a 0.75 milligram dose of the emergency contraceptive. Women will have to ask a pharmacist for the drug, but won't need a prescription.

Some women's health advocates are disappointed the drug won't be available over-the-counter like cold remedies.

"There are still barriers to a woman having access to the drug if she has to go through a pharmacist to have it," said Abby Lippman, co-chair of the Canadian Women's Health Network.

Which, of course, could lead to cases where religious nut-jobs passing as pharmacists may refuse give the contraceptive remedy to a woman. Still, a Canadian woman has a better chance at aborting the need for an abortion than here in the United States. Tell that to the FDA.

Posted by Liza Sabater in Reproductive Rights
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