50% asking for morning after pill are under 20

Some 50% of women who ask for the method of emergency contraception known as the morning after pill are between 15 and 20 years old. At least that is according to a new study by the Institut d'Investigació en Atenció Primària (Idiap) Jordi Gol. Idiap is an institution affiliated with the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and is the only research institute devoted specifically to primary care in the Spanish state as a whole.

The Idiap study was carried out in Girona's Besalú primary care centre (CAP, in Catalan). The centre was used as a baseline to compare figures for demands of the contraception method between 2004 and 2008 and between January 2009 and December 2011. According to the study, the main reasons women gave for asking for the morning after pill was following unprotected sex and, in 23% of cses, because of a broken condom during sexual relations.

Most of the women in the study asked for the pill in the afternoon (62.7% of cases), while some 49% of requests were made at the weekends. In only 9% of cases did a woman go to the CAP to ask for emergency contraception at night. That suggests that some 72% of women requiring the pill went to the CAP within 24 hours of intercourse, with only 9.3% doing so in the following two days.