The cost of the morning after pill has discouraged many women from using the drug. Boots has been criticized time and again for not making any effort toward lowering the price of its emergency contraception pill though campaigners have been constantly protesting to lower the cost of the pill by half. This lead us to wonder about several aspects of the pill, and we began researching to find out the following:
- How much does the morning after pill cost in different countries?
- Why is the cost of EC pills considerably higher in some countries like the UK and the US?
- Does the cost of morning after pills have anything to do with the administration trying to control the reproductive health of women?
We will be sharing our findings along with you today. But before that, let us learn a little about morning after pills.
What is a morning after pill and just how does it work?
Unprotected sex can be scary for several reasons, and the simplest way of avoiding those reasons is by using primary contraception, aka, condoms, during sexual intercourse. But if you didn't or even the condom broke (yikes!), then instead of freaking out, the first thing you need to do is turn towards emergency contraception or morning after pills.
The morning after pill contains one of the two constituents: Levonorgestrel (E.g. Plan B One-Step) or Ulipristal Acetate (E.g. Ella). So, to create things simpler, we can say there are mainly 2 types of morning after pills, namely the Plan B and Ella. Plan B is more common than Ella, though Ella is more effective than Plan B. However, Ella effectiveness depends a lot on the weight of the person taking the pills. For overweight women, Ella may not work as effectively as is expected from it.
While Ella cannot be bought without a prescription, Plan B will come in any drugstore, without a doctor's prescription or note.
How effective is a morning after pill?
Usually, a progestin-only morning pill for example Plan B One-Step or Do something or even the Next Choice One Dose is very effective in comparison to other contraceptive pills. More efficient than these pills are antiprogestin pills. Probably the most popular of these is ella.
The treatment provided by the aforementioned progestin-only morning pills have a record of 7 of 8 unwanted pregnancies being prevented. Thus, one can say that there is an 88 percent effectiveness of these morning after pills to avoid unwelcome pregnancies.
If one takes these progestin-only day after pills within the first Twenty four hours after the sexual act, the risk of conception is lowered up to 95 per cent.
According to research, ella remains effective even when taken 5 days or 120 hours after sex.
The other factor which the effectiveness of the morning pill depends, another thing, is where the individual woman stands in her own menstrual cycle when she takes the pill.
Your position within the menstrual cycle determines how effective the morning after pill will be in averting the unwanted pregnancy. If you're about to ovulate, your risk of getting pregnant is higher than in other cases. Also, if you're close to ovulation, you cannot afford to wait 5 days to take the ella pill and expect results as efficiently as in the situation of a woman who is not ovulating any time soon.
How much does the morning after pill cost?
United States
In U.S.A., emergency contraceptive pills which contain progestin are available on the shelf. Women aren't required to provide an age evidence of any sort. You can find morning after pills like Plan B One-Step or Next Choice One Dose in almost all pharmacies. However, the regulations around EC pills have changed repeatedly within the U.S. which makes it confusing.
How much does the morning after pill cost in the US. Let’s find out:
- The EC pills with progestin, for example Plan B One-Step and others like Take Action and My Way, can be found in drug stores, and there are no restrictions on their own sale. You need not show an ID proof to avail the dry. The program B One-Step costs around 50 dollars, and also the others cost about 40 dollars.
- To use insurance to buy morning after pills, you have to contact the pharmacy and seek assistance from them.
- A site called afterpill.com provides generic types of Plan B One-Step for only 20 dollars. They might charge you about 5 dollars more for shipping. But since expedited shipping isn't offered, you cannot use depend on this mode of purchase in the event of an emergency. Instead, what you can do is purchase these pills from the site to fill up your arsenal for future use.
- Ella pills for effective, are sold by prescription only, though there is no restriction of age. Do it yourself around 70 dollars.
The Uk
As of November 2021, women in England are paying almost 5 times (yes, you read that right) more for emergency contraceptive pills than women in other Countries in europe.
Experts and the ordinary people have expressed outrage at how the government is making without trying to make the drug available out of the box and to reduce the prices of those drugs.
In the UK, unlike the united states, France, and Scandinavian countries, the morning after pill is not available to women with consultation. It's important for women to undergo a consultation, which, makes it necessary for them to discuss their sex lives with a doctor or a primary doctor every time they decide to have unprotected sex. Apart from how ridiculous it is, this process of consultation also lowers the effectiveness of the pill, since it is time-sensitive.
The very high cost morning after pills in the united kingdom, and the difficulty to avail the drugs, has resulted in a framework that is “insulting, expensive, and does not meet women's needs”, according to what Anne Furedi of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service told The Independent.
Ali, 33, from London writes,
“When I had been a student living off lb50 a week, lb20 for the morning-after pill was a lot.
It costs too much for some people. That someone is making profit from it undermines the idea of making it open to all. When I was a student living off lb50 per week, lb20 for the morning-after pill was a lot. In sixth form, the local GUM clinic was only open 2 days a week, so waiting to visit there was not an option.
Since moving to London, a GP appointment is often not available for three weeks so that isn't an option either. Taking a day trip of work or education to sit down in a walk-in clinic reception, with other people who need more urgent help, is really a waste of everyone's effort and time.
The impact is that the morning-after pill isn't actually an option for some women. When not an option and a woman becomes pregnant then they will rely on more invasive procedures and difficult decisions. Not all men want to offer a contribution towards the morning-after pill when they're as responsible or just as unlucky as the woman involved.”
According to the research, morning after pills cost as less as lb5.40 in France and about lb12.50 in Germany. In the UK, however, a woman pays about lb28 on an average. In Ireland, the cost is higher.
In the UK, approximately 61 percent of the female populace uses has utilized EC pills at some point. According to a report on The Times, of the Six million pills taken by women in the united kingdom every year, nearly half of them are purchased, with the cost as well as the embarrassment associated with availing this drug. The remainder 39 per cent is available free of charge at NHS walk-in centers and Accident & Emergency Departments.
According towards the ECEC, the behind-counter policy in the UK, “significantly affects women's access to this method”, and many “felt uncomfortable or judged when obtaining it.”
The availability and the affordability of the drug, however, is not the same thing. For example, in the US, as we just saw, the drugs are easily available, but the costs are exorbitant. To make morning after pills available for women who actually need it, it is necessary that the cost of the pills is lowered and brought to an affordable level in both the countries.
Analyzing why the is so costly in these countries, Elizabeth Gay, a program director at the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, which is a nonprofit working to advance reproductive freedom, told Bustle,
“I think that's something women's health advocates have to address in the future – The least expensive generic, AfterPill, an emergency contraceptive only accessible online, is only $20, which is probably a sign that the product doesn't need to become $50.”
India
In India, which has the second largest population in the world, and is giving close competition to China for the number one position, the emergency contraceptive pill by Cipla, can be obtained over the counter without the need of a prescription and charges about 75 rupees on an average. While this is true on paper, the reality is another thing.
Vaisnavi Sundar, a resident of Chennai, a city in the south of India, writes on World Pulse,
“I live in Chennai-a city known as India's health capital and considered quite progressive. I assumed then that women here were able to find the emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs) they needed. When I heard occasional complaints to the contrary, I reasoned they were about rare installments of low supply. But I was wrong.
When I attempted to look for ECPs myself, I walked into one medical shop after another and was told every time that they were out of stock. I went to prominent hospitals, 24/7 medical stores, and even solicited the help of a male friend to purchase them for me, but found nothing. Things i did discover was that an over-the-counter drug, legally available in India without prescription, was not available in its health capital.”
According to Vaishnavi's research, there has been an unofficial ban on the sale of morning after pills within the state of Tamil Nadu for the last decade. Calling the ban illogical, Vaishnavi writes,
“Though ECPs have been legally available over the counter in India since 2005, in 2006 the Tamil Nadu Directorate of Drug Control (DDC) pulled them off pharmacy shelves in response to protests by patriarchal fringe groups with moral objections to the pills. These groups opposed the product advertisements that implied ladies had free, unprotected sex.”
Selvaraju, who had been director of the Tamil Nadu DDC at the time, said,
“We are not against women's rights, but this is a moral concern. The advertising of the drug will mean that women will think, 'I can do anything and there is an easy way not to get pregnant'. We can't allow this kind of attitude to grow.”
In India, contraception choices by women, is usually looked down upon. The deep rooted patriarchy that glorifies motherhood and treats infertility as a curse, looks at contraception as an immoral act. In such situation, women who are not educated and are poor, make uninformed decisions regarding their reproduction practices and reproductive health.
A woman who asserts her sexual freedom is quickly branded as a woman of “loose character”. To bust these myths around emergency contraception and start a conversation around the topic, Sundar held protests and sought the support of grassroots campaigning organization, “Jhatkaa”, to run an online petition that received about 3K signatures that supported the access to ECPs in Tamil Nadu.
She writes,
“In response, the DDC director submitted a proposal to the Drug Consultative Committee to include Levonorgestrel, commonly referred to as the morning-after pill, among the list of drugs that can be sold over the counter without a prescription.
This proposal will be considered not just in Tamil Nadu but across India. The DDC also intends to increase the availability and accessibility from the medicine in remote areas throughout India and keep ECPs affordable.
Considering how many women in India undergo unnecessary, painful (and often unaffordable) abortions, conceive against their will, and worse, have to keep a child conceived from rape, this is enormous news.
This step, after ten years of an unofficial ban on ECPs, is particularly significant in a country where ideological morality holds high ground, often sidestepping the autonomy women should have over their bodies.”
