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How Can I Talk About … ?
Emergency Contraception
In its newly revised policy statement on teen pregnancy, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) strongly recommends that doctors ensure teens' access to emergency contraception (EC). The AAP joins a long list of prestigious organizations—the American Medical Association, the Society for Adolescent Medicine, the World Health Organization, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, among others—that support providing women with EC to prevent pregnancy after rape, contraceptive failure, or unprotected sex.
So what is keeping emergency contraception from young women who most need it? Ultra-conservatives have successfully muddied the waters around EC, making it difficult to separate myth from fact. Below are simple and accurate talking points to make when discussing emergency contraception.
ANALYSIS and TALKING POINTS:
- Emergency contraception can prevent both unintended pregnancy and abortion. Women's having EC on hand and using it promptly could prevent as many as half of the 1.5 million unintended pregnancies occurring in the United States each year and also as many as 600,000 abortions—and all this without increasing sex or sexual risk taking! Studies show that women who use EC are responsible and careful in also using regular methods of contraception.
- Emergency contraception is completely safe to use. More than 70 organizations—including the American Academy of Pediatrics, Society for Adolescent Medicine, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and American Medical Association—assert that EC is entirely safe to use. These organizations also support making EC available without a prescription.
- Emergency contraception prevents pregnancy. EC does not cause abortion and it does not affect an established pregnancy. Moreover, there is no evidence that EC inhibits fertilization, prevents implantation of a fertilized egg, or affects a fertilized egg in any way, even before implantation.
- Emergency contraception is a responsible option for responsible women. Most of those seeking EC are sexually active women who have never been pregnant and have used other forms of contraception in the past. Many women seek EC after being sexually assaulted. Obviously, women who have been sexually assaulted usually have no opportunity to use contraception before the assault.
- Women who obtain emergency contraception in advance of need do not abandon their regular methods of contraception, such as condoms and/or the pill. They realize—as do the nation's top medical authorities—that EC is a back-up 'emergency' measure—to be used when other steps to prevent unintended pregnancy may have failed.
- Nearly 70 percent of all young people have had sex by age 18. Most do not want to be involved in a pregnancy or to become a parent at such an early age. For teenage women, and especially for those under age 16, pregnancy and childbirth pose serious and significant health risks. Young women who are at risk of pregnancy—for whatever reason—need unrestricted access to EC. No young woman should have to face an unintended pregnancy when a remedy exists that can be taken after sex to prevent pregnancy.
- Health care providers must give teens information about and access to EC—so say the American Academy of Pediatrics, Society for Adolescent Medicine, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Medical Association.
Date Last Updated:October, 2007.
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