Over 1 million US women use morning-after pill every year

5.8 million American women used the morning-after pill between 2006 and 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

24% of users have taken it twice, and 17% have taken it three times or more, according to the report.
“Plan B, much like regular birth control, stops pregnancy by blocking the release of a woman's egg, or it may prevent fertilization or implantation in the uterus,” the Reuters news agency reported. In preventing the implantation of a newly-conceived human being in the uterus, the morning-after pill, like other oral contraceptives, thus potentially acts as an abortifacient.


The report, released Wednesday by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics using data from the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth, also found:

• Non-Hispanic white and Hispanic women were more likely to have used emergency contraception, 11 percent, compared with non-Hispanic black women, 7.9 percent.
• 16 percent of users were between the ages of 25 to 29, 14 percent were teens 15 to 19 years old, and only 5 percent were 30 or older.
• 19 percent of the women who used the pill weren't married, and 14 percent lived with a partner.
• The most common reasons for using the pill were a woman's fear that the contraceptive she was using might not work, or because she had unprotected sex.
• Most of the women who took the morning-after pill had used it only once; 24 percent used it twice, and 17 percent had used it at least three times.

link to Reuters article here