Emergency contraception

Emergency contraception is a specific birth control pill that may prevent pregnancy after unprotected intercourse. Emergency contraception is intended for occasional use as the word "emergency" implies. Emergency Contraception Pills are often referred as ECP's or EC's. The pill is commonly named Morning-after pill‎ because it is actually taken after intercourse.

Questions we could ask ourselves

How Does Emergency Contraception Work?

The role of emergency contraceptive pills (also called "morning after pills" or "day after pills") is to delay ovulation (the time in a woman's cycle when her ovaries release an egg).

If you take emergency contraceptive pills before fertilization (the point when the egg and sperm meet), they may interfere with the process of fertilizing the egg, for instance making it harder for the egg or the sperm to travel (and meet up) in your reproductive tract. It’s also possible that emergency contraceptive pills work after fertilization, making it impossible for the fertilized egg to implant in the uterus.

Concerning the Intra Uterine Device, it does not affect ovulation, but like emergency contraceptive pills, it can prevent sperm from fertilizing an egg. It may also prevent implantation of a fertilized egg.

Emergency contraceptive pills are not the same as the abortion pill. There is no time when emergency contraception would end a pregnancy once it has started. Emergency contraceptive pills don’t have any effect if you are already pregnant. If you decide to have use an IUD for emergency contraception, your health care provider would test you first to confirm you are not already pregnant.

If the EC pill does not work, can the hormones of the pill cause harm to the baby?

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