New contraceptive Pill that can be taken a month after sex is attacked by campaigners as 'abortion by the back door' Academics argue an after-sex pill taken once a month would be popular with women as it would require less planning Pill would disrupt be able to disrupt a pregnancy from four weeks earlier However, some campaigners say pill is 'nothing less than the routine provision of an abortion pill to women' Popular: Women should be offered a once-monthly pill, some researchers have said Women should be offered an after-sex contraceptive pill that could prevent pregnancy up to a month later, say researchers. They are urging drug companies to develop a version of the Pill that would disrupt a pregnancy after the egg and sperm had joined to create an embryo. But campaigners say this pill would effectively be "abortion by the back-door" - by the time a woman takes it the foetus may have developed tiny organs and limbs. Academics from New York and Sweden argue that an after-sex pill that only needed to be taken once a month could prove very popular amongst women. They may only need to take it a few times a year depending on how often they had unprotected sex and it would require less planning, they say. Around 3.5 million British women currently take a version of the Pill which contains hormones to prevent the release of the egg. But many suffer side effects including weight gain, headaches, nausea and more seriously it can increase the risk of blood clots and breast cancer. Dr Elizabeth Raymond, from the New York-based technology firm Gynuity, and colleagues from the prestigious Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, say an after-sex pill would be widely accepted by women - even if it was considered a form of abortion. It could be taken at the end of every month and would be so powerful it could prevent a pregnancy that resulted from sex nearly four weeks earlier. Writing in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care, they add: "Twenty years ago, a multicountry survey specifically designed to investigate women's feelings about a post-fertilisation contraceptive pill found remarkably high acceptance. We have no evidence that women have changed since then; it is the current political environment that needs refocusing. Dr Raymond added: "We need to stop extolling pre-fertilisation contraception as a good thing, because it implies that something that works after fertilisation is bad. We have to stop doing that. On demand: Anti-abortion campaigners have said the pill would theoretically allow women to abort forming embryos, pictured To meet the challenges of our increasingly complicated world, women deserve all possible options for controlling and preserving their reproductive health and lives. But Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust, said: "What these researchers are calling for is nothing less than the routine provision of an abortion pill to women. The licensing of this kind of drug would effectively introduce abortion on demand by the back door. To call a drug a contraceptive when it is designed and intended to be used after intercourse and potentially after fertilisation is a complete misnomer. There is no such thing as an "after-sex contraceptive pill." It is a contradiction in terms. In their zeal to increase choices for women, the researchers have lost sight of the other person who is involved in every abortion no matter how early a pregnancy is ended. An abortion always means the total removal of any choice from the unborn child.