Male Access to Emergency Contraception in RI

Greetings to all,

Just thought you all should know that December 17th is going to be a bigday for me. After some back and forth between the director of PlannedParenthood of RI (Miriam Inocencio), PP Federation of America (Cecile Richards), and I, Dec. 17th will mark the official beginning of male EC access at PPRI and PPRI Express.

If you did not know before, PPRI never had a policy on the distribution of Plan B to men, nor did they provide any referral information. Men trying to buy Plan B in advance or for their partners were thus met with an uncomfortable situation where they were turned away. This may have damaged Planned Parenthood's relationship with these men as well as their feelings of agency in family planning. Where some clinics in California have not provided to men on account that they give their Plan B away for free and they could not get reimbursed for distribution to a male, men and women at PPRI still have to pay for their subsidized Plan B and there is no reason why a man should not be allowed to simply purchase Plan B, especially considering the organization's commitment to choice.

So now there will be undisputed access and I'm happy about it, except for the fact that I won't be around Providence to buy the first pack.

PPRI currently also operates a Pill Project which is working to ensureaccess to Plan B for women in in Rhode Island by identifying pharmacies that do not dispense and then publicly questioning their policies, however they were never committed to ensuring access to men. After some conversations, they have finally agreed to include male access in their surveys. Unfortunately their agreement comes at an inconvenient time, as their work will probably directly coincide with my own research project on male access, however it will be interesting to see if we end up with differing results.

Anyhow, I consider this a big step in changing Planned Parenthood's image into one with a more partner friendly environment. I like to think that Planned Parenthood has become a household name with respect to reproductive decision making/planning, consequently making sure that men feel comfortable there is extremely important for the fostering of partnership in pregnancy (I think you'veall heard this from me ad nauseum). Nevertheless, I would like to stress that where a woman used to ask her male sexual partner "What do we do now?" and the male just shrugged his shoulders, he can now run to PPRI Express and get her Plan B.

It's my sincere hope that women will come to expect this kind of respect from their male partners and that men will honor that request.

Hope you'll all have a safe and happy holiday.

~Brian Nguyen