FDA Approves First Over-the-Counter Birth Control Pill
I’m really tired of people acting like birth control pills are the only way to prevent pregnancy. Last time I checked condoms are readily available. Abstinence is always available!
The FDA approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill called Opill (norgestrel).
“Today’s approval marks the first time a nonprescription daily oral contraceptive will be an available option for millions of people in the United States,” said Patrizia Cavazzoni, M.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “When used as directed, daily oral contraception is safe and is expected to be more effective than currently available nonprescription contraceptive methods in preventing unintended pregnancy.”
The left has been pushing for OTC birth control pills since the Supreme Court eliminated Roe v. Wade.
Because I guess condoms and spermicide are too expensive and not as easily available?
Those you only have to use once. You have to take the BC pills every day.
I know the majority of women take the pill to prevent pregnancy. Believe it or not, there are some women, like me, who take it for other reasons. Let’s say it helps for us who have cycles that wipe them out.
Don’t tell me to take Midol or Tylenol because nothing works for me. Plus, if you’re on chemo (I’m on a low dose for my RA), the doctor highly suggests you take it.
Perrigo, Opill’s manufacturer, said that they will make the pill available in early 2024. No one discussed the price.
This made my eyes roll because I haven’t had to have monthly appointments to refill birth control pills like ever. The doctors give you a yearly prescription. When you need a refill, the pharmacy asks for a refill like it does every medicine it can:
Many patients can’t get timely appointments for birth-control prescriptions, doctors said. One-third of oral contraceptive users missed a birth-control dose because they couldn’t get it in time, according to a 2022 survey by KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation. An over-the-counter option will help change that, doctors said.
“Contraception is basic healthcare and shouldn’t be hard to get,” said Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley, an obstetrician-gynecologist and chief executive officer of Power to Decide, a nonprofit focused on reproductive health.
If you miss a pill or two, then use a freaking condom. Stop acting like birth control pills are the only way to prevent pregnancy.
The best way to prevent pregnancy is by avoiding sex.
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Comments
Have these pills been Tranny tested?
What the hell has that to do with anything about this post? People like you are what give this blog a bad name and allow leftists to mock this site.
Concern troll is concerned.
Proving yet again the left has no sense of humor.
Scott Adams swears that the pill changes the woman’s personality. Also the sort of man she prefers, from alpha to beta male.
I think the pill started in the early 60s, when the divorce rate started rising.
This has been approved by the FDA. Given their track record, I expect there to be commercials by sleazy lawyers on late night TV offering to help sue over the massive side effects in a couple of years.
Subotai Bahadur
I’ve known women who were prescribed daily BC pills to regulate their cycles (as in, they’d go months without one unless artificially regulated); pregnancy prevention is a side effect for them.
Even so, the question of which of the dozens or hundreds of BC pills would be best for a particular person is a conversation she should have with her doctor — along with a few tests.
A single OTC pill option is a one-size-fits-most solution; there will be women for whom this one is not as effective as another, non-OTC one, either for preventing pregnancy or regulating cycles.
(And pardon my cynicism, but what’s the threshold for effectiveness for FDA approval? I have to ask, because some studies show the MMR vaccine is only ~30% effective at preventing measles infection, and it’s still FDA-approved. Hypothetically speaking, would any ladies out there be willing to rely on a BC pill with an up-to-70% chance of NOT working?)
This one is something like 93% effective in regular use, but I don’t know over how long a period that’s measured. Nothing at all would probably be 93% effective in single use.
And a prescribed one, chosen by her doctor to work well with an individual’s specific physiology, can be 98-99% effective.
The “93% effective” is averaged over all the testing participants. Some it will have been close to 100%, others far less than 93%. But without knowing how will interact with an individual’s body, there’s no way to predict where any given person will fall in that.
And that’s not counting side effects of hormone treatments (which most BC pills are at some level). As another commenter pointed out above, fiddling with hormones could have no noticeable effects, or could result in significant personality shifts.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad there’s finally an OTC option that doesn’t require a doctor’s visit. But I maintain that a doctor’s visit and a few tests can greatly improve prevention success rates and minimize side effects. It’s a good idea, even if it’s no longer required.
My question about effectiveness is what it means. It can’t mean one exposure.
“…the question of which of the dozens or hundreds of BC pills would be best for a particular person is a conversation she should have with her doctor…”
Strongly agree!
Didn’t Trump suggest this?
Republicans in Congress have been suggesting it for years.
This should be called a “planned parenthood” pill because if you take a pill before hand, that is “planning”. But if you wait until you already have a viable baby growing in your womb and decide to kill it, that is not planning — but rather failure to plan.
Hand them out for free to anyone with blue hair.
Don’t forget the pink, purple and ever lovely green hair, and I’m not talking St Patrick’s day
Bad choice of color (as in “blue-haired old ladies”).
Well that’s another tool in the arsenal to assist women in preventing an unwanted pregnancy. At a minumum the arsenal includes abstinence, female condom (yes they exist), IUD, Norplant, RX birth control pills, now OTC birth control pills, plan B (morning after pill). Plus tracking ovulation and of course requiring the men they choose to have sex with to wear a male condom. As a last resort abortion is still an option in most States up to viability, in others up to six weeks and travel to a State with less restrictive abortion laws is available.
Hormones and hormone regulators are very dangerous
Years down the road, besides the immediate blood disorders, ie clots
Not a multivitamin
Very dangerous medication
It seems like we’re pretty medically casual about mucking with internal bio processes, these days. A barrier or spermacide goes after the boys before they can do their thing. Re-wiring a woman’s hormone cycle is different in kind.
Antibiotics similarly attack the problem, vs. goosing up the immune system’s response, vs. retasking cel’s internal machinery to create a chimeric surrogate target, to train up the immune system.
Are we that smart about all these interacting, coupled signals, or have we just found a new handle, and think only one thing happens when we yank it?
Respectfully this is a progesterone only pill. Very rare if any clots with this pill. It will certainly be more expensive than several prescription varieties at Walmart, and not as effective. A “so what”
It’s about time.
Aside from mucking with with the endocrine system, which can be very fussy, without consulting a doctor, you have to be wary of drug interactions.
So you should be be discussing it with your doctor anyway. Why not get a prescription. Plus, with most insurance, if you buy it without a Rx then you have to pay out of hand.
Otherwise, I don’t see the problem.
The “problem” solved by OTC hormon-wrangling is the fact that women’s n men’s possible result from sex are different, “Birthing people” can be set of a path to that birthing by the same cooperative event the non-birthing people can’t get pregnant from. And, eliminating the pause to wrap it up gets rid of a moment’s attention and reminder of what can play out here.
I can’t decide if those are payoffs 1 and 2, or 2 and 1, but with the woman rendered infertile, there’s a whole lot about an encounter that just goes away.
“but with the woman rendered infertile”
Except for the minor point that the woman is not “rendered infertile”. The only birth control method that is 100% successful in preventing pregnancy is abstinence.
Utilizing something that is less effective than other OTC methods (like condoms) will provide a false sense of security and may actually increase the incidents of unwanted pregnancy…not to mention increase the spread of STDs.
And I have yet to hear why, in the age of Obamacare, getting a prescription is such a hardship? Oh…that’s right…because of the increasing socialization of our “health care system”” it’s becoming more and more difficult to get a doctor’s appointment in a reasonable amount of time. Never mind.
*I’m still trying to figure out when the private business transactions between myself and my medical service provider became part of a governmental “system”.
Sexually transmitted incidents are skyrocketing among those under 40 and are somewhat concentrated in 15-29 age bracket; this age range accounts for 20% of total.
Promiscuity is commonplace and one result is the increase in sexual disease/infections. They are not evenly distributed among men and women as women tend to have more sexual encounters than men on average.
Syphilis as one example has increased 28.6% from ’20 to ’21. The rate of infection for men who have sex with men is alarming; they account for 46.5% of all male cases despite their far smaller population size. Infections among women have increased by 218% from ’17 to ’21.
Yeah, “temporarily infertile” would be better. “Situationally infertile” even better in line with the point: fertile women’s potential consequences from sex are different from men’s. The pill is attractive because it makes the fertility aspect of sex act the same across the genders. It’s a social statement, of sorts.
The right has been pushing for OTC birth control pills for years. You should know this.
The great thing about effective contraception is that it prevents pregnancy.
The not-so-great thing about effective contraception is that it empowers sexually predatory males (as does abortion).
Sexually predatory males leave a trail of deeply harmed women who become anti-male feminists.
The sexual revolution has been a disaster.
The women who chose to chase after the ‘bad boy’ who ticks all her attraction boxes doesn’t lack agency. She made her choice(s), often repeatedly in a series of frivolous sexual encounters. These adult women could have chosen to date with the intention of marriage; only date men who are also marriage minded. They chose the ‘bad boy’ instead of the ‘nice guy’.
What you are doing here, whether you realize it or not, is seeking to take accountability off the women who voluntarily made their poor choices and place all the blame onto men. It isn’t mens fault that most women choose to date/have sex with the ‘hot’ dude who has a bunch of other options for sexual conquest and chooses to exercise those options. She could have chosen to date the nice, stable dude in accounting who wouldn’t cheat on her or treat her shabby but he was ‘boring’ so….
I do agree about the disaster of the sexual revolution. It empowered women to seek recreational sex just as men have done for centuries. With the addition of social media, a pretty young woman in small town USA now gets likes and contacts from men the world over. Some hot rich guy in Miami offers to fly her into town and the nice guy next door neighbor whom she would have married fifty years ago pales in comparison to the guy from Miami.
It’s created a situation where the top tier of men, top 15% in looks, height, finance, status are being competed for by the top 1/2 of women. Dating app stats demonstrate this. Women swipe right (select a man as a match) less than 10% of the time. Men swipe right 50% of the time.
Bottom line is the top half of women are jumping into bed with the top 10% or so of men. That’s why roughly 1/3 of men age 18-30 is either a virgin or hasn’t had sex in the past year. Women have far more sexual agency than men and the sexual revolution has empowered them, encouraged even, to go out and act like the men they say they despise; the bad boys who hop from bed to bed.