If you are 16 or over, you can order the emergency hormonal contraception (the "morning after pill") online from SH:24 and receive it directly to your home or another location of your choice. This service is free for residents of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.
SH:24 provide the same emergency contraception as sexual health services, GPs and pharmacies and their clinicians are on hand to carry out your initial consultation.
If you’ve had vaginal sex without a condom or if your method fails, then there is a risk you could be pregnant. If this happened within the last five days, you can usually prevent pregnancy by using emergency contraception if you act fast.
Emergency contraception is most effective if you take it as early as possible.
You can use a pregnancy calculator to assess your risk of falling pregnant.
If it happened more than 5 days ago then you will need to do a pregnancy test. This usually involves testing your wee for the pregnancy hormone HCG. Find out more about pregnancy testing.
To get an accurate result you need to test three weeks (or 21 days) after unprotected sex or immediately after when your period should have been due (whichever is sooner). If you test before this, there maybe not be enough HCG to show up in your urine.
Our services can help you with the support and advice you need and provide pregnancy tests.
If you need emergency contraception for recent unprotected sex, you will be asked:
The emergency contraceptive pill will not prevent future pregnancies if you have unprotected sex again, so you should make sure you are taking your contraception correctly.
For Levonorgestrel (LNG): If you are using emergency contraception because you forgot your regular pill or did not use the patch or vaginal ring correctly, you should take your regular pill again, insert a new ring or apply a new patch. Use additional contraception, such as condoms:
For Ulipristal acetate (UPA): If you forgot your regular pills, did not use the patch or vaginal ring correctly, or want to start using hormonal contraception, you should wait for 5 days after taking UPA. This is because hormonal contraception could stop UPA working effectively. Use additional contraception, such as condoms:
