“Maybe the condom broke, maybe you got swept away or maybe you were raped,” said nurse practitioner Susan Wysocki, RNC, president of the National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women’s Health. “There is help in an emergency — and the sooner you get it the better.”

There are currently two emergency contraceptive pills on the market. Preven is a combination of both estrogen and progestin. The other product is Levonorgestrel, commonly called plan B, which is just progestin. You must get a prescription for either one.

They work like this: You take the first dose within 72 hours of unprotected sexual intercourse, you take the second dose 12 hours after the first. One dose is equal to about two regular birth control pills. “The sooner you take it in that 72-hour time frame after unprotected intercourse, the more effective it is in preventing pregnancy,” Wysocki said.

Emergency contraception is 75 percent effective. “That means if 100 women had unprotected intercourse during the second or third week of their menstrual cycle, eight of them would become pregnant,” Wysocki said. “If those 100 women used emergency contraception after unprotected intercourse, only two would become pregnant.

“These pills are quite safe,” Wysocki said. “But you must not use them if you have a confirmed pregnancy.”

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