~sigh~ i wish we could catch up.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

"One of Britain's largest supermarket chains plans to give teen-agers the morning-after contraceptive pill for free as part of a national effort to reduce the number of teen pregnancies.... The morning-after pill is a high dose of birth control pill taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex to prevent pregnancy. It is already available free with a prescription, but many women do not want to wait for a doctor's appointment and buy it over the counter for a fee."

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20020318_489.html

(btw, you can contact the store http://www.tesco.com/ if you'd like to let them know how you feel about it.)

Comments

[urania.livejournal.com]

I think dispensing w/o a prescription is OK if and only if it's done with information/"conseling" from the pharmacist--not counseling as in "how do you feel about this," but side effect counseling, counseling on "here's what to do if you think you're having a bad reaction, here's what's normal to expect, here's how long it's effective for, are you sure you understand the instructions?" etc. Pharmacists are really pretty well qualified for that, or so I'm led to believe..

but just indiscriminately making it available is, yes, a potential Bad Thing in my humble opinion. But i agree that the policy of having it for free if necessary is certainly in the right direction.