Doctor-Free Abortion Pill For Teens
Almost one out of every 100 teenage girls in Britain gets pregnant. That's the highest rate in Europe.
"Young people in this country are having sex very early, and a lot of them are having unprotected sex. What we want to try and stop is so many teenage pregnancies," said Dr. Jenny Tonge, a member of Parliament.
For years, the morning-after pill, which stops unwanted pregnancies, has been available with a doctor's prescription for free. Now, for about $30, girls as young as 16 will be able to pick it up at their local pharmacy without a prescription, CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier reports.
"The thing about the morning-after pill is, that this is something where they can take life into their own hands. They can do something about it, they don't have to go and see a doctor," Dr. Tonge said.
Some 16-year-olds like the change.
"You automatically think you have to go to the clinic and that really doesn't appeal, I know, to me," one teenager said.
The morning-after pill — rather, a series of these pills taken over the space of a day — basically tricks a woman's body into rejecting a fertilized egg. It does have side-effects, everything from headaches and nausea to, in extreme cases, blood clots and kidney failure.
Critics said those side-effects are being glossed-over by the pill's proponents.
"It makes it sound so easy, just go and take a pill. They don't tell them how unpleasant it is, they don't say that it's a very risky pill to take, they don't say 'You are being a bit of a guinea pig but never mind,' " said writer Lynette Burrows, author of Fight for the Family.
And she thinks that without the fear of accidental pregnancy, women of all ages are more likely to have unprotected sex, exposing themselves to a host of sexually-transmitted diseases.
"As night follows day all the figures for sexually-transmitted disease and all the other negative figures — illegitimacy — will be up this time next year," Burrows said.
Her solution: teach them to use condoms, plus other birth control, or abstinence. The British government says, getting that message across will take a lot longer than 72 hours.
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