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Today I want to speak about the emergency contraception.

The idea of emergency contraception —-or a morning-after pill—- is based on a theory. Under this theory, if a woman has unprotected sexual intercourse (without use of contraception, contraception failure or cases of rape) and fears she may become pregnant, she can take large doses of birth control pills to prevent a pregnancy.

Emergency contraception, essentially, is a high dosage of the birth control pill. It is recommended for use after sexual intercourse, over a period of 72 hours, to achieve the goal of preventing pregnancy.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes that emergency contraceptive (EC) s should be widely available and can be provided by pharmacists. In addition, WHO recognizes that EC is highly cost effective and that the cost of EC supplies and services will be more than covered by the savings to the health system in preventing unplanned pregnancy and abortions and their complications.

There are three different ways birth control pills are currently being promoted for this use: progesterone alone, estrogen alone, or both of these artificial steroids together. Again, these are the same steroids found in the typical birth control pill.

In my opinion emergency contraception is used to prevent pregnancy after a coital act not adequately protected by a regular method of contraception. In contrast to early medical abortion, emergency contraception prevents a pregnancy from starting and does not disrupt an established pregnancy.

However, if hormonal emergency contraception is inadvertently taken in early pregnancy, neither the woman nor the fetus will be harmed.

if exist a easier access to and a wider use of emergency contraception could dramatically lower the high rates of unintended pregnancy.