What is the Morning After Pill?
The Morning After Pill (MAP) can be taken up to 120 hours after sex to prevent pregnancy. Just like birth control pills, MAP works by preventing ovulation or making it difficult for a fertilized egg to implant in the uterine wall. MAP is 75-80% effective in preventing pregnancy. Women can actually use their birth control pills to make their own MAP’s (check the links below for more information).
MAP is also called Emergency Contraception, or Post-Coital Contraception. It is NOT the same as RU-486, the “French Abortion Pill.” If you’re already pregnant, MAP will not work.
Is the Morning After Pill safe?
The negative side effects possible with daily birth control pills is due to long-term use of hormones, whereas the Morning-After Pill is used sporadically, as a backup method.
Doesn’t MAP make you sick?
While some women experience nausea and vomiting, most women experience NO SIDE EFFECTS from taking MAP. Taking it with food and using an over-the-counter anti-nausea medication lessens nausea, or prevents it entirely.
Is MAP available anywhere without a prescription?
MAP is currently available without a prescription in more than 38 countries, including France, Kenya, Norway, Guinea, Finland, and the Canadian province of British Columbia. England recently began to distribute MAP free in school clinics to students 16 and under. In some places in France, the Morning-After Pill is distributed for free in bars.
What is the national campaign to gain over-the counter access to MAP?
In December, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) held hearings to decide whether or not to make the Morning After Pill available over-the-counter. Campus NOW and Gainesville Area NOW think that women should be able to go into any drug store and buy the Morning After Pill, and have been fighting ever since for over-the-counter access to this drug.
Aren’t women who use MAP irresponsible?
In our experience it’s men, not women, who are irresponsible about birth control. We found that most men resisted or outright refused to wear condoms; rarely paid for half the cost of condoms or birth control pills; and seldom took the initiative to supply condoms. This forces women to take all the responsibility for birth control— and we almost always do. When we use MAP, we are yet again taking responsibility because we know we don’t want to get pregnant.
Even though most of us use birth control consistently, sometimes we forget to take our pills, condoms break, our partners refuse to use condoms (or put up such a fight that we give in), or we are raped. A few times we have been “swept away” by romance or alcohol, but this shouldn’t mean that we are therefore required to have a baby! Men don’t have to pay this price!
What are CNOW and GA NOW doing to get MAP over-the-counter?
Campus NOW and Gainesville Area NOW, together with the New York NOW Reproductive Rights Taskforce, are using the grassroots organizing tools of consciousness-raising (CR) and speakouts to win easier access to MAP. CR and speakouts help us get to the root of sexism by analyzing women’s everyday experiences.
We have found that our personal pains and struggles are NOT individual shortcomings, but part of bigger, political problems. We can’t solve them on our own, but when we unite and organize in the feminist movement, we have the power to make change.
In 1970, the Women’s Liberation Movement won the right to abortion in NY— three years before Roe v. Wade— using CR and speakouts to mobilize women into action. We can do it again with the morning after pill!
Based on the experiences of women in NYC, D.C., and Gainesville, we discovered that women need the Morning-After Pill over-the-counter for the following reasons:
Lack of publicity & accessibility
Cost & required doctor’s visits
Fear due to misinformation & hype
Available birth control is unsatisfactory
Men not taking reproductive responsibility (i.e. resistance to wearing or supplying condoms, getting vasectomies, paying for all or half of birth control, etc.)
How can you help us win greater access to the Morning-After Pill, birth control, and abortion?
1. Join a grassroots feminist organization that fights for your reproductive freedom! Join NOW and support your local feminists.*
2. Come to the next Campus NOW (call 372-2361 or email campus_now@hotmail.com for more info).
3. Get involved in the Morning-After Pill campaign! Go to mapconspiracy.org for more info.
For more information about how to make your own Morning-After Pill from daily birth control pills, visit backupyourbirthcontrol.org or not-2-late.com (FAQs).