New Study: Morning After Pill Doesn’t Reduce Abortion, Pregnancy Rates 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 5, 2007
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A new study reported in a prestigious medical journal confirms that the morning after pill does not reduce either abortion or pregnancy rates. The survey, published this month in the Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, covers the use of the Plan B drug in 10 countries.
Authors Elizabeth Raymond and James Trussell, advocates of the morning after pill, conducted a meta-analysis of studies conducted in 10 countries.
They conclude that “increased access to emergency contraception pills enhance use but has not been shown to reduce unintended pregnancy rates."
The authors note that “no study has shown that increased access to this method reduces unintended pregnancy or abortion rates on a population level” and that “the consistency of their primary findings is hard to ignore."
They say the morning-after pill “is unlikely to produce a major reduction in unintended pregnancy rates no matter how often women use it” and that “previous expectations that improved access could produce a direct, substantial impact on a population level may have been overly optimistic.”
They also state the drug’s effectiveness may be "substantially … overstated."
Wendy Wright, the president of Concerned Women for America, reacted to the study in comments LifeNews.com obtained.
"The same researchers who demanded the morning-after pill become non-prescription now admit that making the drug easy to get does not live up to their promises of reducing pregnancies and abortions," Wright said.
Wright said that "intense pressure" from them and abortion advocates forced the FDA to make the Plan B drug available over the counter to anyone over the age of 18.
She said that decision "[denied] women the medical counseling and testing that they need before taking this drug."
In questioning the morning after pill’s effectiveness, the authors said "the published efficacy figures calculated from currently available data on this regimen … may overstate actual efficacy, possibly quite substantially."
"Clearly, if the method is only weakly efficacious, it is unlikely to produce a major reduction in unintended pregnancy rates no matter how often women use it," they added.
The morning after pill article is titled “Population Effect of Increased Access to Emergency Contraceptive Pills: A Systematic Review” and appears in the January edition of the Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
