United States: After Donald Trump’s presidential election win, online sales of emergency contraceptives, like the morning-after pill (Plan B), have increased. Many women are concerned that the new administration may limit their access to these medications, according to Monica Cepak, CEO of Wisp, a company that provides sexual and reproductive health services.
As reported by HealthDay, “We are seeing women actually stockpile emergency contraception pills,” Cepak shared; he added that sales increased by 1000 percent in the first day following the election. In fact, we only recently introduced multipacks of Plan B, and this was the major cause of most of the order incline that we noted. Lifting the specification bar to ‘emergency contraception’ reveals that 90% of emergency contraceptive orders are those multipacks.
Still, Winx Health, a sexual and vaginal health firm, pointed to a 315% increase in sales of its morning-after pill Restart the day after the election from the day before the election.
The prices surged as soon as possible, co-founder of Winx Health, Cynthia Plotch, shared with CNN.
Depending on the product, more than fifty percent of our sales are now coming from this multipack. As a result of this, it is not a case that women are purchasing just one product. They’re buying them to have them for themselves, to have them for friends, for sisters,” Plotch said.
Birth control can also be of post-coital contraception, that is birth control which is taken shortly after a person has had intercourse. It is different from a medical abortion because the morning after pills require that the user is not already pregnant while medication abortion terminates a pregnancy, according to American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Still, when women live in states with abortion restrictions, ‘they think that they also don’t have access to this product, too,’ Plotch said of emergency contraception.
‘The key factor to remember is that all of them are intertwined,’ Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy at the liberal-leaning Guttmacher Institute, said to CNN.
“But when you attack one piece of reproductive health care, it really has a ripple effect,” Friedrich-Karnik said.