The morning after pill does not reduce abortions

So perhaps Boots was not standing on especially high moral ground. Claiming it was keeping the price of emergency birth control (aka the morning after pill) high on the grounds that cutting prices might encourage misuse of the drug was somewhat hypocritical given that they have long been happy to provide it free of charge even to underage girls as long as the Government is paying for it.  Not without reason did campaigners on both sides of the debate suspect that Boots was more worried about profits than discouraging “inappropriate use” of the drug.

Sure enough, Boots was quick to crumble at the first sign of pressure from pro-abortion groups and the mainstream press. The BBC was naturally at the heart of this pressure, giving Clare Murphy of BPAS the gentlest of interviews on Saturday’s Today Programme last Saturday.  John Humphrys did not think it was worthwhile providing even the slightest challenge, despite the fact that the BPAS rake in millions of pounds each year from the taxpayer to provide abortions.

A starting point might have to discuss the likelihood that a possible mechanism of action of some types of emergency birth control (EBC) is to prevent the very early embryo from implanting.  In other words, in some cases the drug may cause a very early abortion.  Further, if Humphrys had even a small amount of journalistic instinct, he might have wondered why BPAS were so keen on promoting (EBC) if it is going to make unwanted pregnancies less likely.  A quick search of the academic literature would have given him a clue: it doesn’t.

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