An FDA advisory panel voted unanimously to to approve a new version of the “morning after pill.” The new form of emergency contraception, will be sold under the brand name of “ella,” and it can be taken up to 5 days after sexual intercourse. Ella is already being used in Europe. The women who took [...]
This week’s safer sex question: I’m 17 and very worried that I may be pregnant. I’ve been taking Loestrin 24fe for about 3 months now, and I have a steady boyfriend. I’ve never fully had unprotected sex, but sometimes we use a form of the withdrawal method (but only for about a minute or so). [...]
I know that the headline of this post sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s not. Arizona recently passed a law that allows health care workers and pharmacists to refuse women access to reproductive health care if they feel that it goes against their conscience. The state’s bill is no different than the federal guidelines that [...]
We recently broke the bad news about a new abortion law in Oklahoma that requires information about women who obtain abortions to be published on a public website. One aspect of the law that has received less attention, however, is that the new bill changes the definition of pregnancy. According to HB 1595: “Unborn child” [...]
There is a lot of misconceptions about mifepristone, also known as RU-486 or the abortion pill. Many on the anti-choice side say that mifepristone is the same as emergency contraception, which is also known as Plan B, but they are not the same thing. Mifepristone is a steroid that is used to induce abortion. It [...]
This summer the FDA approved the generic version of Plan B, the emergency contraception pill, and ruled that the pill should be available to women 17 and older over the counter. A recent article in Ms. Magazine praised the decision, stating that the generic form of Plab B, called Next Choice, will go a long [...]
The Montana Attorney General has approved the language of a proposed constitutional amendment that would define a fetus as a “person” from the moment of conception. Two groups, Montana Pro Life Coalition and Personhood USA, are organizing the petition drive to get enough signatures for the personhood amendment to make its way to the ballot. [...]
Dr. Heather Prescott, a Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University, is working on a book about the history of emergency contraception (aka “ec,” or “plan B”). Dr. Prescott’s book will describe the history of emergency contraception from the 1960s until the present and place this story within the larger context of women’s health [...]
First of all, my apologies for the brevity of content today. I woke up yesterday to a dead laptop. My cat managed to spill a glass of water on top of the computer. And I think the rest of the story is self explanatory. Hopefully the nice geeks at the Genius Bar will give me [...]
On Monday, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer approved two pieces of legislation that will significantly restrict access to abortion in the state. The first bill imposes a 24-hour waiting period before women can obtain an abortion. It also requires abortion providers to read a script during a mandatory counseling session that tells women about so-called health [...]
