"The Pill" With No Prescription: What To Know & Why It Matters
SmartHERNews
Jenna Lee
4.9 • 660 Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2024
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It will be a historic first.
The maker of the first over-the-counter birth control pill says to expect their product (Opill) on store shelves in the next few weeks.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill in the United States last summer. We discussed this news with practicing clinician Dr. Sara Gottfried, a New York Times best-selling author who has focused primarily on women's health and hormones. Our conversation spans not just what to consider with the arrival of this new over-the-counter pill but what to watch for in women's health trends in general, benefiting from Dr. Gottfried's unique perspective as a patient, mother and clinician.
Show Notes:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, everyone. This month, we expect to see something different and new in America that we've never actually seen before. |
| 0:18.2 | It will be the first time that you'll be able to walk into your local pharmacy |
| 0:22.0 | and purchase a birth control pill without a prescription. Here's a little background on this |
| 0:28.7 | story. Last year, in the middle of the summer, the FDA approved the first over-the-counter |
| 0:33.7 | birth control pill, saying that this particular pill would be available without a |
| 0:38.3 | prescription at drug stores, convenience stores, and grocery stores as well as online. This ignited a lot of |
| 0:46.2 | headlines, although we didn't have a lot of details. We didn't know exactly when this over the |
| 0:51.4 | counter birth control pill would suddenly appear in our grocery stores. We didn't have a date. We didn't know the price. We didn't know how expensive it could be or how inexpensive it could be. And we weren't quite sure if there would be any additional requirements to consider. The reporting at the time suggested there would be no age restrictions, but we wondered, would that actually be the case? Would you have to show your ID, even though it's over the counter? What would this actually look like in practice? |
| 1:14.6 | So there were a lot of questions left unanswered. And just recently, we have some new reporting. |
| 1:20.7 | The maker of the first approved over-the-counter birth control pill just announced that it will come to |
| 1:26.7 | store shelves in the next few weeks. |
| 1:29.1 | In fact, more specifically, this month and the month of March. |
| 1:33.0 | And it will be available for 1999 for a month's supply, so just under $20. |
| 1:38.0 | Or you could buy a three-month pack for $49.99. |
| 1:40.9 | And if we did the math, we figured it, okay, if you were going to do this for a year, |
| 1:44.2 | it would cost you roughly $200. So let's pause for a moment. Those are some of the details that |
| 1:50.9 | we know. Let's just talk a little bit about the context of the background here. The U.S. |
| 1:55.2 | government first approved birth control, the birth control pill in 1960. And obviously, it's commonly referred to as, |
| 2:03.8 | quote, unquote, the pill. It's also been called, quote, one of the most socially significant |
| 2:09.5 | advances in modern medicine. And in many countries around the world, you can already receive it |
| 2:15.7 | without a prescription. The United States was one of the |
| 2:18.2 | places where you still needed to see a doctor and get a prescription for this sort of medication, |
... |
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