emergency contraceptives

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Do Failed Emergency Contraceptive Result in Birth Defects?

Monday, December 31st, 2012

As I’ve discussed before, emergency contraceptives should never serve as your main form of birth control. In certain circumstances, the morning after pill is perfectly acceptable. Maybe your usual form of birth control didn’t work, or maybe your sexual encounter was unplanned, or—worse yet—unwanted. Occasional use of emergency contraceptives such as the Plan B pill is fine, especially if it will prevent the birth of a baby that cannot be properly cared for. However, these pills are not always 100% effective in preventing pregnancy. If you took an emergency contraceptive but still got pregnant, you’re probably wondering how the hormones might negatively affect your baby’s health.

Luckily, the creators of the emergency contraceptive already thought of that, and they are designed in a way that will not harm a developing baby should the hormones be ineffective at preventing pregnancy. One study in particular showed that emergency contraceptives had absolutely no effect on the likelihood that a woman would have an ectopic pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancies are extremely dangerous for the woman having it, and most are aborted so that the mother can live through them. They occur when the fetus is growing outside the uterus. If you took an emergency contraceptive and it failed, you are just as likely to have a normal, healthy baby as if you hadn’t taken anything at all. Preventing pregnancy with an emergency contraceptive is just as safe as preventing it with regular birth control, even though “morning after” pills such as Plan B give you twice the amount of hormones as a high dose birth control pill.

While you’ll have a perfectly safe pregnancy if an emergency contraceptive fails, you should absolutely never rely on it as your only birth control. If you know that you are going to be having sex, you should already be on birth control to prevent pregnancy. On top of that, you should be using a condom if you aren’t sure of the sexual history of your partner. Doctors aren’t entirely sure what the long-term effects of high doses of hormones are, so taking pills like Plan B regularly could easily lead to blood clots or strokes. If you need to take an emergency contraceptive in a true emergency, rest assured that it will probably work. If it doesn’t, you’ll soon be the mother of a healthy new baby.

 – Yvonne S. Thornton, M. D., M. P. H.