§ Mr. GummerTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what evidence his Department has collated on the impact of the morning after pill on the abortion rate; and if he will make a statement. [138892]
§ Yvette CooperA study of self-administration of emergency contraception following advance prescribing has been performed by Glasier et al in Edinburgh1. This concluded
making emergency contraception more easily available … may reduce the rate of unwanted pregnancies.However, the number of women studied was small and at the present time there are insufficient data to know how availability of emergency contraception might affect outcome measures such as therapeutic abortion rates.
It should be noted that fluctuations in the abortion rate may be subject to a number of different factors and it is therefore difficult to attribute any changes to one intervention or event.
1 Glasier A and Baird D: The Effects of Self-Administering Emergency Contraception. The New England Journal of Medicine 1998; 339: No. 11–4.