N.Y. lawmakers give nod to morning-after pill

[cal04]

The New York Senate gave final legislative approval Wednesday to provide morning-after pills over the counter through pharmacists, midwives and nurses.
The measure will allow girls and women to obtain the medication without a physician's visit or prescription and without parental consent regardless of the patient's age. The medication could be provided by any pharmacist, nurse or midwife that gets a blanket prescription from a physician for any customers.

The proposal, sponsored by a Republican, split the GOP-dominated chamber during a debate in which some equated the birth-interruption medication to abortion. The Democrat-led Assembly passed the measure in January. It now goes to Republican Gov. George Pataki to be signed or vetoed and could be subject to an override attempt.

Emergency contraceptives, also known as morning-after pills, are intended to prevent pregnancy by ensuring that an egg does not become fertilized. Emergency contraception can reduce the chance of pregnancy by 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of intercourse. It is different from RU-486, often called the French abortion pill, which aborts an already attached embryo.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8322113/

[HockeyMom]

1. If I am reading this right,

a pharmacist would still have to dispense this, albeit without a prescription. In that case, there will still be the problem of pharmacists refusing to dispense it.

Why can't they just put it on the shelves along side the condoms and the sponge if a prescription is not necessary? You can now just get Claritin off the shelf, wheras they used to be a precription item.

[Princess Turandot]

2. I don't think they could just stock it on shelves..

isn't the drug a mega-dose of the hormones in birth control pills to be taken in just a day or two? They probably shouldn't risk someone trying to use them as a replacement for birth control pills i.e buying & taking them with regularity, since that would be medically unsafe, I believe. (I'm also assuming that this drug will be affordable, given that it consists of compounds that have been around for years.)

Claritin wasn't a prescription item because of safety. It was a prescription item because of a drug patent.