‘Give women a quicker option’

A leading Bermudian advocacy organization has seized on budget comments from the health minister to push for the so-called morning-after pill to be made available over the counter.

Sheelagh Cooper, chairwoman for The Coalition for the Protection of Children, thinks Bermuda should follow “Canada’s lead and make the so-called morning-after pill available over the counter, rather than requiring a visit to a doctor or the clinic.

“As you might imagine many mistakes are made on the weekend when neither of these options are available and these pills work best as soon [as possible] after the event,” she said.

During remarks last week, Health Minister Trevor Moniz said the island’s Maternal Health & Family Planning Clinic “seeks to achieve a reduction in unplanned pregnancies through the availability of affordable contraception and emergency contraception”.

Ms. Cooper welcomed Mr. Moniz’s comments, saying, “We are pleased to see that government recognizes the need for increased access to emergency contraception.” Kelly Hunt, the special projects director for the coalition, meanwhile, called Mr. Moniz’s comments “encouraging” and thought they suggested “the government is adapting the delivery of family planning and reproductive health services to a changing health care environment.” Ms. Hunt, like her colleague, also pushed for over-the-counter use of morning-after pills.

“As it stands now, the only way for a woman to receive emergency contraception in Bermuda, after regular clinic hours, is at KEMH — or Lambo Foggo Urgent Care Centre when viable — via a visit to the ER,” she said. “Unfortunately, this means that more women face unintended pregnancy.” Of the 4,035 visits to the clinic in 2013, 2,647 of such visits were for “family planning reasons”, which usually means visits that deal with preventing pregnancies through use of contraception.

That marked an increase of 584 for such visits from the prior year. The minister attributes the increase to “sustained health promotion and public education around the goal of preventing unplanned pregnancies”.

More than 90 per cent of the 97 pregnancies the clinic dealt with last year were unplanned or unintended, according to the minister’s office.

The island’s teen pregnancy rate continues to be at a relatively low level, says Mr. Moniz, who attributes that to the ongoing outreach to this population by Department of Health, Teen Services and the Department of Education.

Ms. Cooper agreed that the island is seeing a consistent drop in teen pregnancy. A bigger concern, said Cooper, is “the continued tendency for women who already have children to continue to procreate even when they are having difficulty feeding and clothing the children that they have”.

“We have talked extensively to our clients who seem to have fallen into this pattern and what we have observed is a great deal of apprehension and misinformation about the most common and most reliable forms of birth control…especially the IUD (intrauterine device) and the pill.”