Guest Author - Rebecca Pearce-Banks

Planned Parenthood of the Rockies will be distributing free “morning after” contraceptive pills at its Colorado clinics on Friday because Gov. Bill Owens vetoed a bill permitting pharmacists to offer the prescription. Quoted by the Associated Press, he said that allowing someone other than doctors or nurse practitioners to prescribe “strays radically from the accepted norms of medicine.”

Plan B or the “morning after” pill provides a high dose of the hormones used in regular birth control pills. Taken within 72 hours of intercourse, it stops a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman’s uterus, therefore aborting a pregnancy.

Only eight states currently allow women to get Plan B over the counter from a pharmacy without a doctor’s orders. Colorado would have been the ninth.