For long, family planning charities have been urging females to keep emergency contraceptives stacked so that they have them handy whenever they are needed. The whole idea behind the plan was to make things more convenient for women in case they cannot find a GP or pharmacy instantly.

A recent review of 11 trials, which involved a total of 7,695 women from the US, China, India and Sweden, however, discovered that the rate of pregnancy is in no way reduced when the emergency contraceptive is provided in advance.

The review reveled that women who already have after the morning after pills tend to take them sooner or later after unprotected sex, but this hardly reduced pregnancy rates.

"Our review suggests that strategies for advance provision of emergency contraception which have been tested to date do not appear to reduce unintended pregnancy at the population level", said lead researcher Chelsea Polis.

Polis, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, also stressed that having provision in handy does not seem to raise the risk of people indulging in unprotected sex or sexually transmitted infections.