Posted on
April 5, 2013 by
Eleanor
Happy Friday, Feronians! We’re ending off this week with huge, just-breaking news from the FDA: a judge has just ruled that the “morning-after pill” or as we like to call it, emergency contraception, must be available to all ages via over-the-counter sales.
Yes! That’s a good way to end off your week, wouldn’t you say?
Posted on
February 6, 2013 by
Guest Post
Shippensburg University Plan B Vending Machine. Copyright, Think Progress.
We’re happy to welcome in Dave from theohface.com, a blog that discusses sex, gender and sexuality issues from a sex positive perspective. (Check out his post on the female condom; he also wrote a great post on how grapefruit may get you pregnant.) He’ll be guest posting monthly about sexual health from a male perspective; reach him at his blog or on Twitter: @theohfacedotcom
Having emergency contraceptives available at all times to college students is important because they are most effective within 72 hours of intercourse. Some campus health centers close over the weekends and others don’t have on-campus pharmacies so these vending machines are crucial for women who wish to use Plan B within the allotted window of time. It is also a good option for women who don’t feel comfortable talking to a pharmacist or health practitioner in order to get their contraceptives. We still live in an era in which contraception is controversial and the anonymity that these machines provide is surely appreciated That being said, it seems as though the times are changing and this FDA ruling is a big step towards a more rational conversation about contraception.
The major catch with these machines is that Plan B is restricted for use amongst people aged 17 and older. The concern that will invariably be brought up is that people under the age of 17 will use these machines to acquire emergency contraception. (Personally, I don’t really understand this particular age restriction, 17 years old seems fairly arbitrary to me but hey, I don’t make the rules, I just write about them.)
This whole thing came about because Shippensburg University in Pensylvannia installed a Plan B vending machine on campus and instead of telling them to remove it the FDA made the decision to grant them and any other college or university the legal right to have emergency contraceptive vending machines. It’s a brilliant idea and a step towards a future where women’s health decisions are more firmly in their own hands. In fact, for $25 it can be in their hands 24 hours a day seven days a week without having to talk to anyone at a a clinic or pharmacy. I think that’s something worth celebrating.
Posted on
January 1, 2013 by
Eleanor
Happy New Year, friends! We hope you had an amazing New Year’s Eve. (And if something didn’t go quite as planned? Remember, you can pick up Plan B at your local Planned Parenthood; it’s effective up until 5 days after unprotected sex.)
Sharing a few bits of interesting love and sex links on the internet:
Posted on
August 1, 2012 by
Guest Post
This guest post provided by our Medical Director.
A hard-fought day is finally here! Today, mandatory 100% coverage of a number of women’s preventive services, including the frustratingly controversial contraception provision, will go into place for many women. If you have an insurance plan written on or after today, it will now have to cover the following women’s preventive services with no copay:
These are in addition to all the other preventive services that must already be covered. Not everyone will instantly have coverage today, though. First, you must already have insurance, and then you might have coverage right away if your insurance plan chooses. You might not have coverage until your plan renews. And if you work for a religious employer, you will probably have to wait another year as they have until August 2013 to implement the regulation. But woman are gaining ground.
However, there are still threats to contraceptive coverage. Two weeks ago, a federal judge dismissed a suit filed on behalf of seven states (Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas) who claimed that the contraception mandate violated their religious freedom because (I’m going to just directly quote from the Huffington Post, because the argument is convoluted):
“The states claimed that the contraception mandate violates religious freedom rights under the First Amendment by only carving out an exemption for those religious organizations that primarily serve and employ people of their own faiths. A Catholic charity, the attorney generals contended, would have to stop serving people of other religions in order to avoid having to pay for its employees’ birth control, and then those unserved people would have to turn to the state for assistance.”
And there are still two dozen other suits from religiously affiliated institutions such as universities that are pending. One of these was recently dismissed, but there are many more to come. And this past Friday, the birth control mandate suffered its first court loss in Colorado. But for the most part, for now, the contraception mandate is safe and we can celebrate one more step in the right direction for reducing the health disparities between men and women.
Posted on
April 3, 2012 by
E.G. Hanna
Some years ago, way back before Plan B became available without a prescription, we called in a patient’s prescription to a pharmacy. Because Plan B is something you must take within a fairly small time period for it to be effective, we liked to avoid making people come back in for an office visit.
So once they came in for their visit, we’d write the prescription for a full year – as in Plan B with multiple refills. This way if a condom broke on you again weeks or months later, you could just go grab it with no fuss, no muss, and no waiting in a doctor’s office.
Shortly after leaving the Plan B prescription on the pharmacy’s machine, we got a phone call from an indignant pharmacist. She couldn’t believe we’d wrote it with refills. “It’s supposed to be for an emergency only!” she said. Our response: “It’s for more than one emergency.” We refused to change the prescription.
Years later, some pharmacists are still trying to tamper with your access to emergency contraception. We’ve all seen the stories in the news about the so-called “conscience clauses,” laws giving pharmacists the rights to refuse to fill an Rx if it’s against their beliefs, but it appears that some pharmacists may have turned to outright lying.
MSNBC is reporting the results of a study showing that pharmacists give different answers about the availability of Plan B, depending on if they think they are talking to a doctor or a 17-year-old. Researchers called pharmacies across five states, first identifying as a 17-year-old girl asking if they could buy Plan B, and then posing as a doctor who asked if their 17-year-old patient could buy it. They found that “[t]here was a huge disparity between the answers given to the teens and those offered to the physicians, with 19 percent of the 17-year-olds being told that they couldn’t get it under any circumstances, compared with only 3 percent of the physicians.”
I keep waiting for the days when people will finally get it: Plan B is a perfectly safe and legal medication that prevents a pregnancy. Teen pregnancy is bad. Therefore, teens should have access to Plan B. But in a sociopolitical climate where birth control for adult women is actually considered controversial, I think I’ll be waiting a long time.
I have a lot of respect for pharmacists; creating and maintaining what is essentially a medication encyclopedia inside your brain is not an easy task. But letting your personal beliefs interfere with a woman (17 or not) getting her legal medication is clearly ridiculous. What this study shows is that it’s not enough to fight legal battles; Plan B being legal won’t help prevent pregnancy if no one will sell it to you. Just like with abortion rights and birth control, we have to fight a battle for legality and then fight again for access.
But until society gets its act together and quits trying to interfere with your personal life, don’t take any crap: know the law, understand that Plan B is available without prescription to anyone 17 and over, and if your local pharmacist gives you any trouble, come see us. We will help you.
Posted on
February 23, 2012 by
Fosgood
Oops! So Plan A was:
Plan A didn’t work out so well.
It used to be when unprotected sex happened all you could do was wait, hope, or pray for your period to make an appearance. Now you have Plan B, otherwise know as “the morning after pill” or “emergency contraception.”
Plan B stops pregnancy 89% of the time if taken within 3 days (72 hours) of unprotected sex. It can be taken up to 5 days (120 hours) because sperm can live that long in your body, but works best when taken as soon as possible.
It works by preventing an egg from being released from an ovary and thickens the mucus in the cervix making it harder for sperm to make its way to the egg. There is no evidence that Plan B stops a fertilized egg from attaching to the wall of the uterus or causes an abortion by causing an attached fertilized egg to detach.
Plan B is made from a high dose of progestin, one of the main ingredients in birth control pills. Side effects? One out of 4 females feels nausea for a day or so. However, it is emergency contraception – for women who would have become pregnant, it reduces pregnancy by 89%. It’s also more effective the sooner it’s taken.
Plan B offers no protection against Sexually Transmitted Infections. You may want to be tested for them also.
If you are male or female 17 years old or older, you can buy Plan B without a prescription. (Yes, men can buy it too!) If you are a female under 17, you will need a prescription, but not the consent of a parent. (However, we here at the Feronia Project believe that there should be no age limit to buying emergency contraception.)
You can find Plan B at Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, health clinics or a pharmacy. Prices vary, so check things out before you buy.
It’s nice to know you have a Plan B when Plan A hasn’t worked out so well!
Edit: Some updates to effectiveness statistics.
Posted on
December 27, 2011 by
Firdaus
It’s that time of year again: endless cookie trays, wrapping paper rolls, and holiday cheer (or stress!). So, whether you’re spiking the eggnog under mistletoe or popping champagne to your own fireworks, here are some tips for staying safe and sexy.
Boozing 101: Alcohol reduces inhibitions, and can lead people to do things they wouldn’t while sober (this is probably why we drink it). Along with safer sex practices, we want you to arrive home safely. Every thirty minutes someone is killed by drunk driving. Holidays are no exception.
Date Rape 101: Not to yellow your snow but every 2 minutes, someone in the United States is sexually assaulted. About 2/3 of assaults are committed by someone the victim knows, and 38% of rapists are a friend or acquaintance. Oh, and 80% of victims are under 30 years old.
Ways to protect yourself? Stay vigilant! Know your boundaries, and be clear about them. If an assault takes place, CALL THE POLICE!
Spiked Drinks 101: Drugs like Rohypnol (“roofies”) or Gamma-Hydroxybutyerate (“GHB”) are clear, tasteless, odorless chemicals that are sometimes slipped into drinks to help an attacker subdue their victim before an assault. Within 5-10 minutes of ingesting wither of these drugs, a person’s inhibitions will become impaired, often leading them to “black out,” or have short-term amnesia. This gives an attacker the opportunity to assault their victim with less chance that the victim will remember the encounter or be able to report it. These drugs leave the blood system within 72 hours, and are often hard to detect in toxicology reports. So, how do you keep yourself safe?
Safe Sex 101: Getting hot and heavy tonight? Pack ahead! Remember to bring your contraceptive method with you if you’re away from home this season. Packing ahead can prevent some awkward interactions, like getting hot and heavy…then realizing you don’t have protection.
So pack ahead and remember that if an accident happens, you can buy emergency contraception in all 50 states without a prescription (if you’re over 16) – you just have to ask a pharmacist or come to a Planned Parenthood.
Live well, love well, and drink responsibly this holiday season. (I personally think I’ll skip the booze all together in exchange for Strawberries and Champagne lube!)
Posted on
December 19, 2011 by
Firdaus
The week before last, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius blocked the recommendation from the FDA to lift age restrictions on Plan B One-Step (emergency contraception that helps to prevent fertilization from occurring up to 72 hours after unprotected intercourse – not the abortion pill).
What that means is that the FDA, after years of careful review and analysis, had decided that there was no scientifically indicated reason why the medication should require a prescription for users under 17 (and remain behind pharmacy shelves for the rest of us). This highly anticipated recommendation would have allowed Plan B to move (without prescription) from behind the pharmacy counter to where it would be most effective: on store shelves next to the condoms and pregnancy tests.
As someone who has had to resort to “Plan B” after my “plan A” failed at age 16, I feel personally outraged that the Obama administration has supported the HHS and blocked Plan B, an easy-to-use and incredibly important medication that has less physical risk than Tylenol or tampons!
Despite the FDA’s 10 years of scientific investigation on the medication, Sebelius’s rationale was that 11-year-old girls might not follow the directions correctly and, thus, need continued formal medical oversight (a clinician to tell them to take one pill as soon as possible within 72 hours after unprotected intercourse).
What?! In a nation where just about half of all pregnancies are unplanned, where too many of our teenagers are pregnant, and where millions of women lack health insurance, you’re ignoring their needs because the 1% of 11-year-old girls who might be having sex might take the one pill incorrectly?
Medical experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics have come forward recommending that Plan B be made available for all ages without prescription; experts in the field agree the directions are simple enough, the medication is safe enough, and that there are no legitimate scientific or social reasons why this prescription/behind pharmacy counter barrier should continue to exist.
Experts aside, what if that eleven year old did take Plan B incorrectly? Logic and science tell me that:
1. The medication would be ineffective and her chances of pregnancy would not be decreased.
2. The medication would be ineffective and her chances of pregnancy would not be decreased.
3. The medication would be ineffective and her … should I go on??
Either she would reduce her chances of becoming pregnant or not. And if we are taking the “common sense” approach that Obama cited, my common sense tells me the physical, emotional and societal risks of an 11-year-old becoming pregnant and having a child are more realistic than her misreading instructions that say “take this pill within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse.” What are the real-life consequences of a girl taking the medication incorrectly? Well, pregnancy!
My “common sense” tells me this decision is not about 11-year-old girls. My unfortunate suspicion is that the Obama administration is buckling to the demands of conservative political opponents and, recently, the Catholic Bishops. I understand that I’m ignorant to behind-the-scenes politics, but I do know that the decision contradicted this administration’s policy to choose science over policy To quote the President in 2010:
“… In this new Administration, we base our public policies on the soundest science; that we appoint scientific advisors based on their credentials and experience, not their politics or ideology; and that we are open and honest with the American people about the science behind our decisions.”
In the spirit of his conservative predecessors, politics trumped science again; and in the spirit of systematic patriarchy, ideology trumped women’s health again.
With Obama entertaining an exemption to the Affordable Health Care Act that would allow religious affiliations to reject contraception coverage for their insured employees on moral grounds, and the stunning blow to Plan-B accessibility, it’s almost like the President has forgotten that it’s election season and WOMEN ARE WATCHING.
Posted on
December 13, 2011 by
Genevieve
Like most women, you are probably trying to juggle a million things at once and having one more thing to remember can be difficult. The pill is one of the most popular methods in the United States but it is also one of the methods that most women forget to take from time to time.
If you have one of those moments, take it as soon as you remember. If you don’t remember until the next day, and are taking a combination pill (estrogen/progestin) take 2 pills that day. If you miss more than 2 birth control pills, call your health care provider for instructions. Here’s a helpful chart, “What Do I If I Forget to Take the Pill?” (Scroll down a little bit to see it.)
If you miss more than 2 birth control pills you may need a backup method of birth control. Some include condom, female condom, and emergency contraception.
Another great resource for those of us that have trouble remembering to take our birth control method is Bedsider. Bedsider will send you funny, uplifting, and sometimes sassy text reminders to you for the pill, patch, ring, or shot. All you have to do is text MyBC to 42411 to start your reminders.