OHIO — The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill in the United States.
Dr. Adarsh Krishen, Chief Medical Officer of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, said this was significant for health care.
“What this means is it’s a wonderful leap forward in the provision of care and the access to health care that citizens have wanted for a long period of time,” he said.
It is called ‘O-Pill’ and Krishen said this is a big win for those who have little to no access to health care.
“Allowing patients to have access through their local pharmacy, they don’t to go to a health care provider and so it makes it much easier for them to just go down the street to their local pharmacy and access contraception that they would not have the ability to access otherwise,” he said.
Some people may fear that this increased access to birth control could also increase the number of teenagers who take the pill without knowing the potential side effects or that they make them think they no longer have to worry about getting pregnant.
Krishen said that he is not worried, and this will decrease the amount of unplanned pregnancies.
“We know that over 50% of pregnancies in the country are unplanned and despite everything we’ve been trying to do over the years, I’ve been in practice over 30 years, despite everything we’ve tried to do over the years we’ve had very little impact on the unplanned, unwanted pregnancy rate in this country, and in Ohio in particular, and so it seems very unlikely that this will have any adverse effects,” he said.
Dr. Stephanie Teal, a gynecologist with University Hospitals, also weighed in on the news. She said that the over-the-counter pill is just as effective as a prescription one.
“On the one hand, it is very safe for almost all women to use as birth control, but on the other hands not everybody is going to love how it interacts with their body and we absolutely want to see them in the office to talk about how we can do better,” she said.
Teal said that the birth control pill could affect people differently, so that if you have bad side effects, you should try to see a doctor.
“So the study that was shown to the FDA in terms of the effectiveness of this pill. There were 955 women who used this pill, only this pill, for a year, six got pregnant. That’s actually what we would expect to see in the study of the prescription only combination pill, so I’m not actually concerned that this is decreased effectiveness,” she said.
There has yet to be a confirmed date for when this pill will hit the shelves and there is also not a set cost. However, Krishen said he believes the price will be lower than the average cost of a prescription birth control pill, which Planned Parenthood said can be anywhere from $0 to $50.