Britain: Contradictory Messages About Sexual Responsibility

Abstract

Combinations of contraceptive pills had been used in Britain as a post-coital “back up” contraceptive method for almost 20 years before the first dedicated product was available for doctors to prescribe. Only in 1982 was Schering-PC4^TM, a combined estrogen-progestin product, specially packaged and licensed by Schering Health Care Ltd (Schering) for “emergency” post-coital contraception (Paintin 1998). Rumor has always held that the marketing of this dedicated product was undertaken by the company only reluctantly at the request of government health officials who were concerned about the widespread “off-license” use of regular combined oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) by doctors who, recognizing the value of post-coital birth control, were following the Yuzpe regimen for emergency contraception (EC). In effect, the marketing of a dedicated licensed product, for which a single pharmaceutical company was commercially liable, could be seen as a means to control and regularize the practice of post-coital OCP use and render it subject to scrutiny and monitoring. Once a product was available, its use could be measured and the circumstances in which it was prescribed could be set out formally, replacing the idiosyncratic ideas and moral opinions of individual doctors.