The Telegraph is reporting that the new service will allow women to order emergency contraception over the internet and have it delivered by courier within two hours. For a fee of around $32, women will access the drug through the online medical practice of DrEd.com rather than go through their general practitioner. They will be instructed to fill out a form which will ask users to confirm if they are over age 18. All forms will be assessed by doctors before the pills are dispatched, usually within two hours of the request. Women will also be able to order the pills online at night for delivery the following morning.
Critics say it will be too easy for minors to access the pills, but DrEd founder Amit Khutti said young girls will not be able to do so because a date of birth is required during registration and patients need a credit card.
“I don’t think this service is going to appeal to minors or encourage under age sex," Khutti told the Telegraph. “For a start, you need to pay for the service and if you’re young there are a number of places you can already get the morning after pill free."
He added: “Emergency contraception works better the sooner you take it, so having it delivered within two hours will make it more likely to be effective.”
He promises that the pills will arrive in discreet packaging "so women won't be embarrassed."
However, officials such as Norman Wells of the Family Education Trust say girls can easily lie about their age to get the pills, which is why it should remain a prescription-only drug.
“Since the morning-after pill was first approved for use in the UK, various schemes have been introduced to make it more widely and more easily available, yet the international research evidence continues to show that making it more readily available has not succeeded in reducing unintended pregnancy and abortion rates," Wells said.
“Instead, young people in particular have been lulled into a false sense of security, take a more casual attitude to sex, and become exposed to an increased risk of sexually transmitted infections.”
A study conducted by the University of Nottingham and published in January 2011, found that emergency contraception schemes have been largely unsuccessful in the UK since the government's Teenage Pregnancy Strategy was introduced in 1999. Aimed at cutting the country's teen pregnancy rates in half by 2010, the program included granting wider access to emergency contraception, but researchers say this may have contributed to the slight uptick in the number instead. The Nottingham study also found that the presence of an emergency contraception scheme in a local area was linked to a five percent increase in sexually transmitted diseases in the under-18 age group, and a whopping 12 percent increase in girls under the age of 16.
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