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 Researchers report in the journal Contraception that in about one in
every five attempts, young men in New York City were not able to buy
the drug that can prevent pregnancy up to five days after
unprotected sex.
“We give a significant amount of lip service for men to be
responsible in the couple and there are a number of ways for them to
do that,” Dr. David Bell told Reuters Health. “In this case, if the
condom breaks, they can do that by getting emergency contraception
for their partner.”
People should make sure they aren’t putting up additional barriers
that prevent men from taking a responsible role within the
relationship, Bell said.
Bell, the study’s lead author, is from Columbia University’s Mailman
School of Public Health. He's also the medical director for the
Young Men’s Clinic, part of New York Presbyterian Hospital's Family
Planning Clinic.
“In my conversations with a number of young men, they would say ‘I
would try to go get emergency contraception from the pharmacy and
they asked me to get my partner’s ID or any woman off the street,’”
he said. “It was in the back of my mind about how real were these
barriers.”
Currently, any person of any age can buy the morning-after pill –
often sold as Plan B One-Step and Next Choice one dose – without a
prescription at U.S. drugstores.
When the study was conducted in July 2012, U.S. law restricted
access to the morning-after pill without a prescription to men and
women 17 years old and older.
For the new study, the researchers sent three male mystery shoppers
– ages 19, 25 and 28 – to 158 pharmacies in the Washington Heights,
East Harlem and Upper East Side neighborhoods of New York City.
Overall, the mystery shoppers were able to purchase the medication
at 128 of the pharmacies.
Of the 30 pharmacies where the mystery shoppers couldn’t access the
drug, 22 required the male to bring either a female or her ID with
him. The other eight pharmacies said they didn’t have the medication
in stock.
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Most of the people working at the pharmacies did give the mystery
shoppers accurate information about the medication’s effectiveness.
One worker incorrectly told a shopper that the medication would
cause an abortion. Another worker incorrectly told a shopper it
would cause birth defects.
The findings don't necessarily hold true for other parts of the
country, Bell said.
“Although New York City is particularly liberal and would have
better access, given this is the situation in New York City, I would
speculate that there is probably more of an issue in other parts of
the country that we haven’t studied,” he said.
In New York City, Bell added, it’s fairly easy for men who are
turned away at one pharmacy to go to another.
“I obviously can’t speak to smaller towns where there may be only
one pharmacy,” he said.
Bell said a possible next step for the research is to do the
experiment again to see if things have changed since there are now
no age restrictions on over-the-counter access to the morning-after
pill.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1qr1Kvw
Contraception, October issue(online June 27), 2014.
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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