OK of morning-after pill stirs yeas, nays in LV

The Food and Drug Administration's approval of a pill to prevent pregnancy following unprotected sex has received mixed reviews among birth-control adversaries in Southern Nevada.

Gynetics Inc. of Sommerville, N.J., was approved last week to sell a package of higher-dosage birth control pills -- trade name Preven -- as a prescription morning-after prevention for $20.

Las Vegas obstetrician Dr. Jeffrey Wrightson sees the decision as being a step forward and more convenient for women. He feels by having pills specifically packaged to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex, this will enable women to plan ahead and provide a safety net in case other birth control methods fail.

For years physicians have known that by giving women larger doses of birth control pills within 72 hours after having unprotected intercourse, the risk of pregnancy is reduced 75 percent.

The problem was that many women didn't know this. The ones who did or were informed by their obstetricians, then had to take a home brew of pills to achieve the desired results.

By using regular birth control pills, a woman either took two or four pills within the 72 hours, and followed with two or four similar pills 12 hours later.

For years, drug companies refused to sell higher-dosage birth control pills in one package specifically designed as a morning-after prevention. By contrast, such stronger ECPs have been marketed in Europe for decades.

At a recent annual meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Las Vegas, Dr. Stanly Zinberg, director of the ACOG Practice Activities Division, said that drug companies were fearful of being liable. They also thought, he said, that the market was too small and the subject too politically charged.

"We're not dealing with abortion. We're dealing with pregnancy prevention," Roderick Mackenzie, chairman and president of Gynetics, said in a recent Los Angeles Times interview. "How can that possibly be against anybody's moral strategies?"

The FDA approved the company's request last week.

"Basically, we brought abortion home," said an angry Kris Jensen, chairwoman of Nevada Concerned Citizens, a conservative pro-life organization. "Conception has already occurred. This absolves people from personal responsibility."

But Liz Carrasco, public affairs and education coordinator of Planned Parenthood of Southern Nevada, disagrees. Her national pro-choice group believes if a woman's egg hasn't been implanted in the uterus, a fetus has not yet begun to develop.

Carrasco said a lot of people confuse morning-after pills with the French abortion pill RU-486.

Morning-after pills don't cause an abortion, Carrasco said, and they won't work or harm a fetus, if a woman is already pregnant.

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