From Mrs B. A. Smith, MRPharmS
SIR,— I am concerned to read that the majority of pharmacists favour over-the-counter emergency hormonal contraception (PJ, October 23, p665), and I admire those who have written in with objections. I wonder whether these pharmacists have really thought the matter through.
There seem to be some contradictions in the discussion. The aim is to reduce Britain's embarrassingly high teenage pregnancy rate, yet it was said at the British Pharmaceutical Conference that "by concentrating on the issues concerning teenagers there is a danger of getting into child protection issues". Quite! Is not society becoming ridiculous? When my child of 12 is stung by a wasp or bitten by red ants on the school sports field, the teacher is rendered powerless to do anything except dab on water, yet I can be expected to hand over a drug, which has profound physical and psychological effects, to a 12-year-old girl, about whom I may have little or no medical history let alone an accurate address, and I may not tell her parents. Picture the busy pharmacist with a queue of prescriptions (20 minutes' waiting time), the phone ringing, and orders coming in, now faced with an appeal for EHC. Can the situation really be dealt with properly every time? The general practitioner or casualty doctor is infinitely better placed behind closed doors, undistracted and "shielded" by receptionists.
Are we not guilty of removing the last protection from young girls, ie, to say "no" and of reducing the need for condoms now? After all, "there's that pill you can go and get from the pharmacist on Monday before school". Will spare packs of PC4 acquired for the next occasion be used appropriately? Who will follow up treatment? And can we expect the incidence of HIV and sexually transmitted infections to escalate? In the next decade we will have to deregulate something to deal with that. Our local family planning nurse joked "why not train pharmacists to fit IUDs and perform abortions?".
Infertility and multiple births are more than likely long-term consequences of the contraception culture. So where the Government might be trying to cut costs on late abortions or social benefits, it will end up footing the bill for in vitro fertilisation, etc.
In its teaching on "uncomfortable" topics like divorce, contraception and abortion, the church is simply being honest to God and interlinking the commandments "love your neighbour as yourself", "thou shall not commit adultery" and "thou shall not kill". Of course, absolutes are impossible attainments for mere humans, but we can keep trying to aim for a heavenly situation and realise that with God-given human rights and dignity come responsibility. Come on! Let us have a society and a Society which decides to love and dares to say that adding to these wrongs cannot rectify the situation. Let us support matrimony, parenting, adoption and pro-life agencies instead.
B. A. Smith
Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire