The study was developed by researchers from the MIPP Millennium Institute, who examined the expansion in the availability of the Emergency Contraceptive Pill (ECP) in Chile.
“Access to the Emergency Contraceptive Pill and Women’s Reproductive Health: Evidence From Public Reform in Chile”, is the title of the research carried out by academics Viviana Salinas and Damian Clarke of the Millennium Institute for Research of Market Imperfections and Public Policies (MIPP).
The aim of the study was to better understand the effects of the Emergency Contraceptive Pill (ECP) and to examine whether subsidized access would affect maternal health.
The researchers examined the sharp expansion in availability of the emergency contraceptive pill in Chile following legalized access through municipal public health care centers. They studied the period 2002–2016 and a broad rollout of the emergency contraceptive pill occurring between 2008 and 2011.
By combining a number of administrative data sets on health outcomes and pharmaceutical use, and using event-study and difference-in-differences methods, the scholars were able to document that this expansion improved certain classes of women’s reproductive health outcomes, notably reducing rates of abortion-related morbidity.
These improvements were greater in areas of the country where the rollout of the emergency contraceptive pill was more extensive.
The researchers’ results suggest that as many as 27,000 cases of abortion-related hospitalizations may have been prevented. Reducing morbidity rates from this by approximately 10%.
The investigation also documented some evidence that refusal to provide the emergency contraceptive pill upon a women’s request was linked with a worsening in reproductive health outcomes. For example, the rates of morbidity due to abortion increase by 3%.
According to Damian Clarke, who is also an academic at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Chile, between 2009 and 2012 there were complications in distributing the pill in the public system:
“Due to an initial ruling by the Constitutional Court, it was understood that it could be delivered in public clinics, but in practice, as there were later other relevant rulings in the Comptroller’s Office and due to this confusion, in some municipalities they were delivered and in others they were not”
Damian Clarke
However, the “ideological rejections” by the mayors also had an influence, since distributing the “morning after pill” went against their “moral principles”, according to the investigation.
Check out more details of the investigation in the following video:
MIPP Chile 2024