Did you know that there is a "back-up" method of birth control that women can get to keep in their medicine cabinet? You may have heard of "emergency contraception" or the "morning after pill." This is a higher dose of daily birth control pills that can be taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex or contraceptive failure to help prevent pregnancy. Widespread knowledge and use of this back-up birth control method could prevent as many as half of the three million unintended pregnancies that occur each in the United States.
On Wednesday, the Reproductive Health Technologies Project and a coalition of hundreds of national and local medical organizations and women's health advocates will kick off the first annual "Back up Your Birth Control" campaign.
Student Special Events, the New Mexico chapter of the National Abortion Rights Action League and Students Educating Peers About Sex will set up a table with education information at the Duck Pond from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. We will have speakers and a movie about the history of birth control in the United States from 7-9 p.m. in Mitchell Hall.
The goal of the campaign is to encourage women to emergency contraception, or a prescription for it, on hand in case of a contraceptive failure or unwanted or unprotected sex.
We're trying to bring emergency contraception into the 21st century by bringing out of the shadows and putting it into women's medicine cabinets. It is alarming that we a back-up birth control method that allows for the failure of other contraceptives and user error, and it is so underutilized.
According to Connie Rossignol, who works in women's health at the Student Health Center, many people, including pharmacists, do not realize that emergency contraceptives are birth control. For more information, come by our table Wednesday. You can also go to www.not-2-late.com. Remember, worrying can't prevent pregnancy but emergency contraception can.
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Kimberly Lavender
History major and intern with the National Abortion Rights Action League
