Study: Use of Morning After Pills Doesn’t Cut Abortion, Pregnancy Rates

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Apr 18, 2007   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Study: Use of Morning After Pills Doesn’t Cut Abortion, Pregnancy Rates Email this article
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 18
, 2007

London, England (LifeNews.com) — A new study in England find that widespread use of the morning after pill has done nothing to cut either abortion or pregnancy rates there. The research also shows that the use of the Plan B drug also did not lower the rates of sexually transmitted diseases.

Conducted by the Cochrane Library Review, the study looked at eight surveys of women conducted in the United States, India and China.

The survey found that the promotion of the morning after pill increased its use but did not lower the abortion and pregnancy rates as abortion advocates have claimed it would.

The study found that the use of the morning after pill increased from six percent of women in 1996 to 12 percent in 2002.

Not only did the abortion rate not go down, the study found it increased 50 percent during the same period of time.

This is the second time British research has found the morning after pill to be ineffective.

Last September, Professor Anna Glasier, director of the Lothian Primary Care NHS Trust in Edinburgh, published a report in the British Medical Journal admitting that there was no link between increased use of the drug and lower pregnancy or abortion rates.

“Despite the clear increase in the use of emergency contraception, abortion rates have not fallen in the UK," she wrote.

In the past five years since the morning-after pill was made available over-the-counter, hundreds of thousands of women have used it but the number of British abortions has also risen steadily from 186,300 in 2001 to 194,400 last year.

Figures show abortion rates in England have risen from 11 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 in 1984 to 17.8 per 1,000 in 2004.