Wider use of morning-after pill failing to cut abortions

In recent years the emergency pill has been made more widely available over the counter, while there has also been outrage over reports of it being handed out at school gates.

But Professor Anna Glasier, director of family planning at NHS Lothian, said although use of the morning-after pill had increased, abortions were also up.

Religious leaders and pro-life campaigners say that emergency contraception encourages promiscuity.

Cases have emerged in Scotland of health workers arranging for schoolgirls to receive the pill in nearby clinics, although the Executive has said it is not handed out in schools.

Prof Glasier, writing in the British Medical Journal, said the pill was useful "in some women some of the time", but was not reducing abortion rates.

Surveys of UK women having abortions in 1984 showed that 1 per cent had recently taken the morning-after pill. By 2002, this had risen to 12 per cent. But at the same time, rates of abortion in the UK have increased from 11 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 in 1984 to 17.8 per 1,000 in 2004.

Past studies, including one involving 18,000 Lothian women, have shown that getting emergency contraception to keep at home increased its use by two or three times - but with no measurable effect on abortion rates.

Prof Glasier said: "The problem is many women do not realise they have put themselves at risk of pregnancy.

They may assume that it just won't happen to them, so even if they have the morning-after pill at home they don't use it."

She said about a fifth of sexually active teenage girls in Scotland would have taken the morning-after pill in the last year. Yet there has not been a significant drop in teenage pregnancies. She said: "I am not saying it isn't useful to some women who want to prevent a pregnancy, but it is too much to expect that it will reduce abortions."

Prof Glasier said promoting contraceptive use before sex was more effective at reducing abortion, rather than encouraging its use after sex.

Peter Kearney, spokesman for the Scottish Catholic Church, said the morning-after pill was not the answer.

"By making it quick and easy to get the morning-after pill, it is like saying it is all right to be sexually promiscuous. We need a value-based approach to this problem rather than a biological, medical approach," he said.

The Family Planning Association (FPA) said that emergency contraception was no substitute for correct, regular use of contraception but was an important option for many women.

Toni Belfield of the FPA said: "It is not, and was never intended to be, a panacea for abortion."