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Mike Mitka

JAMA. 2001;285:3080.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The incoming president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) said his colleagues should offer advance prescriptions for emergency oral contraception during women's routine gynecologic visits to help cut the nation's rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion.

Thomas F. Purdon, MD, of Tucson, Ariz, ACOG president-elect, made his comments during the college's 50th Anniversary Annual Clinical Meeting in Chicago.

"If most women had emergency contraception in their medicine cabinet, or a prescription for it, we could help cut the US rate of unintended pregnancy in half," Purdon said. "Ob-gyns—indeed, all primary care physicians—can help make that happen."

About half of the 3 million pregnancies in the United States each year are unintended, and half of those end in abortion, according to ACOG. Purdon said he believes widespread availability of emergency contraception might prevent more than 1 million unplanned pregnancies a year and possibly hundreds of thousands . . . [Full Text of this Article]