Read other letters about this article
The reason why plan B needs to be OTC is simple: It must be taken within 72 hours for it to be at all effective. Now this may not seem like much of a hardship to you, but imagine this (not uncommon, unfortunately) scenario. It's Friday night, your doctor's office is closed until Monday and you live in a rural small town where the closest access to emergency services for this could be more than 100 miles away. You somehow manage to get a prescription in time, you take it to the one pharmacy in the area and the pharmacist refuses to fill it, citing religous beliefs that it is evil. Not only do they refuse to fill it, they confiscate it (Oh yes, it has happened) so that you can't take it anywhere else to get it filled. By the time you manage to get another prescription and have found a pharmacy to fill it it's way to late. Throw in the fact that this type of scenario has happened to rape victims, and I should hope that it is now clear why access needs to be widely available. Especially now that there are several states with plans to adopt bills protecting pharmacists that refuse to fill (and also confiscate) prescriptions for Plan B and even birth control based on religious freedom grounds. Plan B is the only medication that I know of that can prevent a pregnancy AFTER the sex has already happened. And for all of the rape victims alone, it needs to be available OTC.