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No ban on EHC through pharmacies
(18 April 2002)

The sale of emergency hormonal contraception through pharmacies is legal, a High Court judge ruled on 18 April.

Mr Justice Munby rejected a bid by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) to have over-the-counter sales of Levonelle (levonorgestrel) banned under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. SPUC had argued that the product caused abortions and was responsible for miscarriages and thus contravened the Act.

The judge said that to have accepted this argument would have potentially outlawed all forms of oral contraception and the coil.

"The prescription, supply, administration or use of the 'morning-after pill' does not — cannot — involve any offence," he ruled. "There would be something very seriously wrong with our system if a judge in 2002 were to be compelled by a statute 141 years old to hold that what thousands, hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of ordinary, decent law-abiding citizens have been doing day in, day out for so many years is and always has been criminal."