Published 23 December 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a3056
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a3056

Head to Head

Should the contraceptive pill be available without prescription? No

¹ Royal College of General Practitioners, London SW7 1PU

Two areas in London are piloting over the counter oral contraceptives. Daniel Grossman (doi:10.1136/bmj.a3044) argues that the policy should be widely adopted but Sarah Jarvis believes it is the wrong approach to reducing unwanted pregnancy

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The United Kingdom is top of a league in western Europe—and a very undesirable first place it is, too. The league table is that for teenage pregnancies, with rates of teenage motherhood in the UK, at 15%, around twice those of Germany (8%), three times those of France (6%), and almost four times those of Sweden (4%).^{1 2}

The implementation of a national teenage pregnancy strategy in 1999 has gone some way to reversing the rising trend of teenage pregnancies, but only by about 2% a year in the first five years after it was implemented.³ As with other lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, however, the UK still ranks far behind the United States, where 22% of women have a child before the age of 20.²

Nevertheless, action still needs to be taken to address the underlying causes. The Department of Health Social Exclusion Unit has highlighted complex reasons for the . . . [Full text of this article]

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