Britain's longest established anti-abortion group today won permission for a high court action to try to stop sales of the morning-after pill to women over 16 from pharmacists, without a prescription.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children [SPUC] will now dispute the legality of the government's reclassification of the Levonelle-2 pill at a full hearing before the end of July.

The drug, which SPUC says delivers 50 times the dosage of the daily mini-pill contraceptive, was made available from pharmacists without the need for a doctor's prescription in January this year.

The society's counsel, Richard Gordon QC, told Mr Justice Scott Baker that the change was unlawful under 19th century legislation because it permitted the commission of the administration or supply of poisons or instruments with the intent to procure miscarriage.

The 1861 Offences Against the Person Act prohibits the supply of "any poison or other noxious thing... with intent to procure the miscarriage of any woman, whether she be or be not with child".

Mr Gordon said that there was a strongly arguable case which raised very serious medical and legal issues. "It is the wider availability and the concomitant social effects which has caused SPUC to be concerned," he said.

Granting permission, the judge said he was persuaded that an issue existed that required resolution and it was better that it was decided in the civil courts than by way of private prosecutions brought in respect of specific supplies of the drug.

"There is an arguable case on what is fundamentally a very important question," he added.

John Smeaton, SPUC's national director, said recently: "Our case centres on the undeniable fact that the morning-after pill can cause the death of a newly conceived human being by preventing his or her implantation in the womb.

"Thus the morning-after pill can cause an early abortion, and should be subject to the controls set out in the 1967 Abortion Act."

Mr Smeaton said SPUC was "morally obliged" to oppose the wider availability of the morning-after pill and said that the pill could not be accurately described as a contraceptive because "it can cause the death of a newly-conceived embryo."

"It denies distinct and unique human individuals their right to life, and we cannot stand back and let this deception continue without raising our voices to defend the truth," he added.