Murmurs are spreading throughout several major news media outlets that the United States Food and Drug Administration might allow the emergency contraception pill Plan B to be sold on the shelves of drugstores without any kind of age restriction on sale, according to an article published on Tuesday in The Boston Globe.
Under the current law, the drug is available through the pharmacist for people over the age of 18, and has been for the past five years. The possibility of this new arrangement poses a lot of controversy for both advocates and opponents of the drug.
Plan B sells at about $40 and can be taken to prevent pregnancy within about 72 hours of having unprotected sex. Sometimes it can prove a useful and necessary means of preventing pregnancy, just as aspirin can be a useful way of preventing headaches, but there are potential problems associated with it being sold on the shelves.
The main problem with this possibility is one of safety. Young girls who know no better would be enabled to have unprotected sex and buy and take the pill more frequently, which could cause health problems. Its increased availability in drugstores could pose serious consequences for the safety of the girls taking it.
This is not to say that Plan B should not be available to girls under 18; it absolutely should. Without a doubt, young teenagers who are sexually active have just as much right and need to the pills as adults do, but making it so readily available could cause serious problems. People need to be informed about the nature of the pill and what it does to their bodies, but as much as education is the ideal solution, it is not always the practical one.
While age restrictions on purchasing Plan B should be eliminated, the drug should remain behind the pharmacist’s desk. If the buyer has to go through a pharmacist, at least she has a better chance at receiving an education on the pill’s effects and possible risks associated with it.
With this controversial issue, the number one concern of the Food and Drug Administration should be the safety of the people. In an ideal world, all girls would be educated and able to make informed decisions about contraception, but that is not a world in which we live, and until we can reach that goal, Plan B needs to remain available to everyone, but behind the counter.
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