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Video: Shippensburg Official Defends Plan B Vending Machines
Updated: Thursday, 09 Feb 2012, 5:29 AM EST
Published : Wednesday, 08 Feb 2012, 3:05 PM EST
SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. - A Pennsylvania college is defending its choice to give students the chance to get the morning-after pill as easily as they can grab a soda.
Students at Shippensburg University can get the Plan B emergency contraception pill at a vending machine inside the campus health center.
The school does not make a profit from the pill's sale. They pay $25 a dose, and so do the students.
The pill is legally available over the counter to anyone over age 17.
School officials say making it available through a vending machine makes things a bit more comfortable for students who may need it.
"We had some conversations with them. We went out and we did a survey of the student body, and we got an 85-percent response rate that students would be supportive of having Plan B in the Health Center," said Roger Serr, vice president of student affairs at Shippensburg University.
Serr added, "We weren't comfortable providing it for free, because that would mean we were supporting Plan B with either state money or fee money."
"It's really there – the machine is really used as much for privacy as anything else, if a person wants to come in," he said.
Doctors say contracting an STD or developing infertility are some of the risks when you use Plan B as birth control instead of as an emergency contraceptive.