Pushing pills

NARAL is on a campaign to get the ‘morning-after’ pill on more shelves across the nation. The Kroger food chain seemed to be stalling, but they promise that they’re not.

Two weeks after Kroger Co. said it was clarifying its policy on stocking the so-called “morning after” pill, activists say dozens of stores continue to block sales of the emergency contraceptive.

Representatives of NARAL Pro-Choice America…sent a letter to Kroger officials Wednesday asking them to carry the drug at all of their pharmacies.

Ted Miller, communications director for the group, said members called 231 Kroger-run pharmacies across the country and found that 21 percent of the stores did not make the drug immediately available.

Reasons ranged from an employee in Kansas who said he would not sell the drug to another in Utah who said it had not been approved for over-the-counter sales in that state, the group said.

It has been a controversial drug, and the misreporting on it hasn’t helped.

Sold as Plan B, emergency contraception is a high dose of the drug found in many regular birth-control pills. It can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.

Critics argue that the pill encourages promiscuity and unprotected sex. Some consider the pill related to abortion, although it is different from the abortion pill RU-486 and has no effect on women who already are pregnant.

Formerly available only by prescription, the federal Food and Drug Administration made the morning-after pill available over the counter to adults in August.

So let’s at least get some accurate information out there.