Back in the 1960s, when the Pill became available in Aotearoa New
Zealand, the New Zealand Branch of the British Medical Association (the precursor
to today’s NZMA) decided it would be unethical for doctors to let unmarried
women get their hands on it. Doing so, it was argued, would be akin to doctors giving
extra-marital relationships a stamp of approval, and the NZMA wasn’t about to
do that.
If you thought doctors keeping us from
the Pill for our own good was a thing of the past, think again. Sure, it’s no
longer under the guise of protecting our moral purity – (most) doctors have
(mostly) given up on that argument. Now, it’s all about protecting our health.
As recently as 1996, both the Royal
College of General Practitioners and the NZMA opposed the reclassification of
the Emergency Contraceptive Pill so it could be purchased in pharmacies. “We have concerns that in a pharmacy the patient may be disadvantaged
from receiving the greater advice that would occur in a general practice
consultation,” the college’s chairman, Professor Gregor Coster, was quoted as
saying in an article in the British Medical Journal.
Fast forward to 2016, and a new front in
this seemingly endless struggle is focused on efforts to get the Pill, aka oral
contraception, liberated from doctors’ prescription pads and made available
over the counter. The most recent round began in 2014, when Pharmacybrands Ltd
(now Green Cross Health, which represents 300 community pharmacies and has an equity interest in 80) and
Pharma Projects Ltd, (now Natalie Gauld Ltd.) made an application to Medsafe’s
Medicines Classifications Committee to reclassify the Pill so it could be sold in
pharmacies without prescription, though only by specially trained pharmacists,
following the model that’s now used for the Emergency Contraceptive Pill.
That
application was turned down in the face of stiff opposition from general practitioners and the NZMA: the latter
said they didn’t think prescription only access was a barrier to the Pill and wanted
to make sure doctors continued to provide “the advice and counselling about its
use and about sexual health in general”, while the College of GPs, apparently
felt “as if they are being excluded from an important
part of primary health care”. (Never mind that the actual users of this
“important part of primary health care” were – and continue to be – excluded.)
On the plus side, the New
Zealand Committee of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians
and Gynaecologists (is that a long enough title for you?) backed the
reclassification saying it was “strongly in support of any responsible
development designed to improve access to quality contraceptive advice and
service”.
