Often a couple's first sexual experience is not a planned one and this can be a problem when it comes to birth control unless the woman is on the pill or the man carries a condom. Most of the other possible contraception devices would require expecting to have a sexual encounter and therefore having brought something with. Depending on when intercourse occurs in a woman's cycle this unplanned lovemaking can be a cause for worry. If the woman is concerned about becoming pregnant she does have one set of alternatives open to her; emergency contraception. This is not a method that should be used as a replacement for taking proper precautions during intercourse but it can be the answer when pregnancy is feared. Emergency contraception must be used within seventy two hours of intercourse to be effective.

These emergency contraceptives are sometimes called morning after pills. This name is somewhat misleading as a woman does have up to seventy to hours after intercourse to use it not just the next morning. The most common of the pills to choose from are very much like the Pill but with much higher level of hormones to prevent conception from occurring. There is another type that is referred to as an anti-hormonal drug as it has no estrogen or progestin in it. But, it seems to do the same thing. The medication that uses both estrogen and progestin has earned a reputation of being less useful. The woman must take two pills, twelve hours apart. The feeling is that this emergency contraception method is not as easy on a woman's body.

The progestin only method has an eight nine percent effectiveness rating while the two step method has a seventy five percent rating for effectiveness. Now, these numbers may be confusing if you do not understand how they are calculated. If you take a group of one thousand women who are afraid that they may conceive based on the timing of intercourse and the timing of the cycle it is actually likely that only eighty of them are at risk of conceiving. Therefore it is a percentage of those eighty that the researchers are talking about. Consequently, if there are eighty that could conceive, even after the medication, twenty women will still become pregnant.

It should be understood that these medications do not abort a pregnancy, they prevent it from happening. A woman does not become pregnant the very moment they have intercourse. If the emergency contraception is used, especially if it is used within twenty four hours following intercourse, it acts before pregnancy occurs.

There are some side effects of taking this medication. A woman may suffer from nausea, headaches or even cramps. None of these are serious. These emergency contraceptives are safe for women to use. They have no long term harmful effects and if a women does wind up pregnant despite using the emergency contraceptive she should know that having taken it will not affect her unborn child in any detrimental manner.