Court challenge to morning-after pill

A pro-life group is today mounting a High Court challenge to the sale of morning-after pills over the counter at pharmacies.

There are fears that if the challenge succeeds it could throw family planning into chaos. Anti-abortion group The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) wants a ruling that the pill is, in fact, a method of early abortion and should be subject to abortion legislation.

The 1861 Offences Against the Person Act prohibits the supply of any "poison or other noxious thing" with intent to cause miscarriage.

A win for SPUC could mean that birth control methods such as the pill and the IUD could also be outlawed, although it would not affect barrier contraceptives such as condoms, or sterilisation.

The central allegation is that a criminal offence is committed in the use of any form of birth control which interferes with a fertilised ovum implanting in the lining of the uterus.

John Smeaton, national director of SPUC, said recently: "This is a major public policy issue affecting the health of women in this country and in particular young women - which coincidentally is a case of the Government seeking to circumvent the Abortion Act.

"Here we have pharmacists having the burden imposed on them of providing abortion by the morning-after pill in a totally unsupervised way, and no one knows the impact of this drug on women."

Mr Smeaton said the prescribed use of the drug stood at one million a year. He said that there must be concern as to whether pharmacists would be able to judge whether a woman was under 16. "When you have chlamydia rising at a rate of 28 per cent per year, it would be quite irresponsible to allow this government policy to go unchallenged."

The Department of Health, which is contesting the judicial review application, says: "We strongly support the introduction of emergency contraception into pharmacies for women aged 16 and over as this is a choice women want. Pharmacy availability has been endorsed by nearly all the main medical and pharmaceutical bodies, the Committee on the Safety of Medicines and the Medicines Commission. It should reduce abortions, which are highest among women in their early twenties."

Chief executive of the Family Planning Association Anne Weyman has described the challenge as "yet another disappointing and extraordinary attempt to restrict women's access to emergency contraception. A clear legal precedent was set in 1983 that emergency contraception is not a form of abortion."