The Morning After…in Ramallah

Update: One week later we returned to the first pharmacist we had visited in Umm al-Shariya - this time to get throat lozenges. He immediately recognized us and asked if we were able to get the pill, before showing us three boxes of Postinor that he had ordered. We wondered if he got them as a result of our request or if he had known what we needed but was not able to provide for us that day. 

Warning: while this is ostensibly a post about the politics of sexual reproduction in contemporary Ramallah, the observations derive from a very personal experience that – for some readers – will be Too Much Information. While this is hardly sensational stuff, if you simply don’t want to know me *that* well, don’t read this post.

This Friday, the contraceptive S and I were using broke, and we only realized this after the fact. So after the inevitable brief and mild panic, we went in search of a pharmacy. While most shops are shut on Fridays, we were actually lucky enough to find quite a few pharmacies open.

The first pharmacy we went to – just down the road in Umm al-Shariya – didn’t know what emergency contraception was. They showed us the monthly birth control pill.

The second pharmacy we found – now in Ramallah itself – did know what emergency contraception was. However, the pharmacist told us that we would have to go to a doctor to get a prescription. When asked if he could recommend a doctor, he said there were plenty, but didn’t recommend one in particular. For the record, I have bought plenty of prescription drugs, without a prescription, in Ramallah. Pharmacists simply sell you what you need. While we can’t prove it, I’m inclined to agree with S. that this guy was making a moral judgment.

The third pharmacist knew about emergency contraception, and even knew the name of the brand (although this only became clear later). However, he didn’t have any in stock. He wrote the name of the brand down on a piece of paper – incorrectly as it turns out. Since the incorrect version of the brand was ‘powster’, which he pronounced ‘poster’, we thought he was talking about an advert he’d seen. He recommended going to another pharmacy to see if they had it in stock.

The fourth pharmacist we found had not heard of emergency contraception. She said that she had many friends who had been in similar situations and become pregnant. I think she was suggesting that they would have benefited from such a pill. She said she didn’t think we would find such a pill in Ramallah.

After this we returned to the third pharmacist. He called another pharmacy, and then we established that he could order the emergency contraception and it would arrive the next day. Somewhat disconcertingly, after we asked him to do this and confirm that it would arrive, he replied ‘inshallah’ (God willing, or hopefully). Anyway, God must have willed it, because we were able to pick up the emergency contraception – called Postinor – the following day.

In the interviews I have been doing as part of my research, a number of people have expressed a desire to only have one or two children – ‘a small family’. Given that this suggests changing reproductive desires in this city (c.f. the average number of children per couple remains just above 6 in the Occupied Palestinian Territories), it is interesting to refract these desires through the lens of contraceptive availability, and the practices of health care professionals. Our small and very unscientific survey of pharmacists suggests that there is quite a lot of ignorance about emergency contraception in Ramallah. None of the pharmacists kept this form of contraception in stock. The different ways the medical professionals responded to us (in turn: confused, judgmental, helpful, sympathetic), also demonstrated a wide range of attitudes towards couples that wish to drastically reduce the risk of conception in an emergency.  

More broadly, the experience also underscores the need to always have/pursue multiple options when trying to achieve anything here.

[For anyone who arrived here after googling ‘morning after pill’ and ‘Ramallah’, try the Old Town Pharmacy located across from the Arab Bank in Ramallah Takhta.]