Many pharmacies refuse to sell 'Plan B' to teens

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
3/26/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Emergency contraception drug kept from teenagers as pharmacies think its illegal to sell to them

Pharmacies have allegedly been offering inaccurate information when they thought 17-year-old girls were seeking emergency contraception such as Plan B One-Step, a recent study has found. Although it's legal for 17-year-olds to get the so-called morning-after pill, the study proved that pharmacy employees often tell the teens they're not allowed to have the drug.

The following question was asked only by the callers posing as teens who were told that a 17-year-old could get the morning-after pill: 'My friends said there is an age rule [regarding access without a prescription] -- do you know what it is?'

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - An undercover survey found that many of the pharmacies that told girls they were too young to get what is called "emergency contraception" did provide the correct information when a doctor called seeking the pill for a 17-year-old patient.

"I was shocked that 19 percent of 17-year-olds were told they couldn't get the medication at all," Dr. Tracey Wilkinson, the study's lead author says. The report has been published in the latest issue of Pediatrics.

"That's like one in five. And I think if you told an adolescent once that she couldn't get the medication, she probably wouldn't call another pharmacy. It would be the end of her attempts."

Wilkinson's study evaluated the real-world availability of Plan B, One-Step and other "emergency contraception" drugs, which are available without prescription to girls and women starting at age 17. Girls younger than 17 years of age require prescriptions to obtain the medication.

Proponents say that using "emergency contraception" could prevent half of all unplanned teen pregnancies. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which is a front group for Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortion in the world, each year in the U.S., nearly 750,000 girls, ages 15 to 19 become pregnant, and about 85 percent of those are unplanned.

Opponents correctly insist that such drugs induce abortion when an egg is fertilized but not yet implanted. Human Life begins at conception. In those cases, the drugs evict the embryonic human person and thereby intentionally cause death.

� 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

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Keywords: Plan B, contrception, teenagers, study, abortion, pharmacies

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