You have to admire Marian Richardson's chutzpah. One Saturday afternoon the condom she and her boyfriend were using split. She became pregnant. Four years on, little daughter by her side, she's just tried - and failed - to sue Durex for £120,000. Most of us, however conscientious, have been there (though litigation might seem extreme): suddenly sobering up to realise that "devil-may-care" wasn't the best contraceptive choice.
At times like these, a quick, painless solution would be a godsend. A pill, for instance, in your bathroom cabinet, that you could swallow straight away to stop yourself getting pregnant. Of course, it does exist: the "morning-after" pill, which has been around for 20-odd years. The drawback is that to get it you have to visit your doctor. Preferably within 12 hours of having sex, although 72 will do.
According to the Family Planning Association, a startling 47% of all pregnancies in Britain are unplanned and yet we have 13 different methods of contraception to chose from. Either we're a nation of bumbling idiots, or something is putting us off contraception.
When it comes to emergency contraception, this could well be the thought of your stern family doctor demanding to know, "What, exactly, went wrong?" Or it could be that getting to the surgery in time wasn't possible (most of us would probably chance it rather than spend our bank holiday weekend skulking in the local A&... ). Or perhaps it's because taking the morning-after pill is yukky: you get nauseous, and often vomit.
For this reason alone the release last Wednesday of a new morning-after pill, Levonette-2, is good news. The traditional pill, PC4 (the one that's been used since the 70s) con tains two hormones: oestrogen, the "female" hormone, responsible for things like breasts and ovulation, and progestogen, which prepares the womb to receive a fertilised egg. It's the oestrogen that makes you sick. Levonette-2 is a breakthrough because it contains only progestogen. So you don't get sick.
In fact, there are no side effects, no medical contra-indications and it is no stronger than the contraceptive pill that women used to take every day. The best news, though, is that Levonelle-2 prevents 85% of expected pregnancies if taken within 72 hours. PC4 prevents only 57%. It's also simpler: you take two pills 12 hours apart, rather than the four (two then two 12 hours later) you take of PC4.
But how, exactly, does it work? According to Dr Anne Webb, consultant in family planning and reproductive health at the Abacus Service in Liverpool, "nobody really knows". What's certain, though, is that a dose of progestogen (or progestogen and oestrogen) will alter a woman's menstrual cycle. It can delay ovulation, or prevent it for a month.
It can alter the lining of the womb, so that a fertilised egg will not implant there. Or it may change the environment of the womb so that sperm aren't transported so efficiently. Basically, says Webb "it's like a spanner stuck in the works: it scuppers your normal cycle".
Some people claim that taking the morning-after pill is like having an early abortion. The first thing to remember is that although you may be panicking, your egg may not have been fertilised - emergency contraception is about reducing risks. Still, strictly speaking, as Toni Belfield, director of information at the Family Planning Association explains, "those who believe life begins when the sperm meets the egg, and not when the egg implants itself in the womb might not chose this method".
However, once a pregnancy has been established - the fertilised egg has implanted into the womb - the morning-after pill can't stop it. "I could give it to a pregnant woman every day for a week and absolutely nothing would happen," says Webb.
So why can't we keep a pack handy in case we, or some rubber company, mess up? Last year in England and Wales, nearly 200,000 women had abortions.
Anything that reduces this number should surely be promoted. "Emergency contraception shouldn't replace regular contraceptive methods - it's less reliable," says Belfield, "but increasing access to it through pharmacies would help prevent unplanned pregnancies and reduce the number of abortions."
Manchester Health Action Zone is currently running a pilot study to see if this is feasible. They've made the morning-after pill available though 16 specially trained pharmacies. You may think that discussing your contraceptive failure in front of your GP is marginally preferable to doing so before several grannies at your local chemist. But as Beverly Parkin, spokesperson for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, says: "Discretion is a big issue in pharmacy today." Gentle questioning "in a private area of the shop" would go hand in hand with "advice on safe and reliable regular contraception".
But some claim that wider availability will encourage teenage girls to cast off their knickers without a thought for the consequences. Certainly the morning-after pill offers no protection from sexually transmitted diseases.
But, says Belfield, "there is absolutely no evidence that a more widely available emergency contraceptive would encourage teenagers to have unprotected sex." In fact, it's twenty-somethings we should be worried about. "The highest number of unplanned pregnancies in this country are in women aged between 20 and 25," she says.
Indeed, the average age of those using the Manchester service - 23 - bears this out. In the US Levonelle-2 goes under the rather more catchy name of "Plan B". Currently, if you don't want to get pregnant, you choose from a range of pills, have injections or implants, use any number of barriers, even pee on sticks to check your hormones; so there's really no excuse for fecklessness. But accidents will happen. A couple of pills might have spared Marian Richardson hours in court. As for the rest of us, it never hurts to have a plan B, does it?
