Osteoporosis-induced fractures: what therapeutic possibilities are available?
Weiss, J.
Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 131(36): 1923-1924
2006
ISSN/ISBN: 0012-0472 PMID: 17024781 Document Number: 596079
Court Decision: [2002] Family Law Reports 146; 2002 May 10 (date of decision). The Queen's Bench Division held that a criminal statute proscribing the supply, administration, or use of any substance to procure a miscarriage did not prohibit the sale of emergency contraception (the "morning-after pill"). The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, a privately funded lobbying organization, had brought suit to enjoin pharmacists from selling emergency contraception to women over the age of sixteen without a prescription. The organization argued that the morning-after pill is an abortifacient agent and that Parliament had intended, in the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, to prevent interference with implantation by criminalizing miscarriage. The court held that the 1861 Act left the word 'miscarriage' undefined, and that the word is to be interpreted using modern parlance. In contemporary understanding, 'miscarriage' refers only to the disruption of pregnancies after implantation. Furthermore, pre-implantation methods of contraception have been available to, and used by, the general public for decades. Therefore, emergency contraception which merely prevents implantation or fertilization is not prohibited as supplying, administering, or using a substance to procure a miscarriage.