Emergency contraception, or the "morning-after pill," is playing a growing role in reducing abortions in the United States and may account for almost half of the recent decline in abortions, according to a new study by a leading reproductive health research center.
The study, by researchers at the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, involved surveying a nationwide representative sample of more than 10,000 abortion patients in 1994 and 2000.
During that period, the number of abortions fell from 1.4 million in 1994 to 1.3 million in 2000, while the use of emergency contraception increased slightly.
Emergency contraception consists of ordinary birth-control pills. When taken as prescribed in two heavy doses up to three days after sex, the pills can prevent pregnancy. The regimen became more convenient when the first specially packaged emergency contraceptive, called Preven, hit the market in 1998, followed the next year by Plan B, which causes less nausea and is effective up to five days after sex.
U.S. abortion rates have been falling for more than a decade, a trend that has been attributed, among other factors, to abstinence education, reduced access to abortion, fear of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, the anti-abortion movement and greater use of all types of contraception.
However, the institute study found a slight decrease in traditional contraceptive use by women who had abortions. The percentage using some form of birth control dropped from 58 percent in 1994 to 54 percent in 2000.
Since 110,000 fewer abortions occurred in 2000 than in 1994, the researchers concluded that 43 percent of the decline - 47,000 fewer abortions - can be explained by the growth in emergency contraceptive use.
"The increase in the use of emergency contraceptive pills may account for a significant part of the recent reduction in abortions nationally," wrote researcher Rachel K. Jones and her colleagues.
This idea is bolstered by data from IMS Health, a healthcare information company in Plymouth Meeting, Pa. In 2000, women filled 88,000 prescriptions for Preven and 2,000 prescriptions for Plan B. This year, 107,000 Preven and 88,000 Plan B scripts have been filled.
The Guttmacher Institute endorses abortion rights and receives some funding from Planned Parenthood, but it is regarded by both sides in the abortion debate as a reliable data source.
Even so, anti-abortion activists disagreed with the researchers' conclusions about emergency contraception.
The Pennsylvania ProLife Federation, an affiliate of National Right to Life, believes the decrease in abortions reflects "the fact that more and more people are pro-life," said federation education director Maria James Trussell, a Princeton population researcher who had worked for a decade to publicize emergency contraception, lauded the study as "the very first piece that estimates the impact" of the 26-year-old method.
But that impact, he said, is still too small, considering that each year 3 million American women have unintended pregnancies - more than a million of which end in abortions.