Last month, the FDA approved Plan B contraception sales to women 18 years of age and older without a prescription.  Marketed as just another means of birth-control, the sales of these pills have been heralded by liberals, feminists, abortion advocates and, sadly, some conservatives too. Women's groups say over-the-counter sales could reduce the number of abortions because more women would be able to get the pills in time without going through the hurdles of getting a prescription.   By making this statement, however, they are unmistakably denying that by taking the pill women are only substituting surgical abortions with chemical abortions. 

There are clearly many harmful side effects to taking “morning-after pills” and, while these will be fully examined, I want to make it clear that my primary objection to the use of these pills is not that it might, and probably will, adversely affect the woman taking them.  Rather, my primary objection to these pills is the same objection I hold for all abortions – that it is the murder of a live baby. 

The fact that life begins at conception and not at some unknown time during the pregnancy or at birth has already been established.  Conception occurs shortly after the act of intercourse. Unfortunately, pro-abortion advocates have once again played subtle word games to gather public support for the use of morning after pills. John Wilke, a physician and President of Life Issues Institute, writes in an online article:

When discussing the morning-after pill we must first consider the facts. Conception can occur as quickly as 30 minutes after intercourse, as the sperm can travel up to the ovary that quickly. If an ovum awaits, fertilization then occurs. Twenty-four-hours later, cell division begins and for the next week this tiny, new living human embryo floats freely down his or her mother’s tube. At one week of age, he or she plants within the nutrient lining of her womb, sends a message into her blood and is responsible for stopping her next period. We use the terms conception and fertilization interchangeably to mean the union of sperm and egg. Pro-abortion forces continue to try to change the meaning of the word conception to mean implantation at one week. They use the word "pregnancy" and their rationale is that her body isn’t "pregnant" until the new passenger attaches, which is at one week. So they’ve redefined the word conception to mean implantation.

At this point we should not be surprised to learn that the pro-abortion camp has, once again, stooped to deceptive measures to advance their agenda.  A Concerned Women for America article by Wendy Wright and Jody Porowski further debunks the myth that “morning-after pills” do not cause abortions.  The article states:

Web sites that promote the morning-after pill claim that it "will not cause an abortion." However, they also state that one way that the morning-after pill can prevent pregnancy is by inhibiting implantation in the uterus. They fail to say what is inhibited from implanting. It is an embryo, a human in the earliest stage of life. Embryos contain 23 chromosomes from the mother and 23 chromosomes from the father - the full genetic information of a distinct human being.  This "inhibition" caused by the morning-after pill terminates a human life.

Gene Rudd, M.D., author of Practice by the Book, serves as Associate Executive Director of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA), a national organization of over 17,000 doctors and dentists founded in 1931.  He writes of the findings in a 1999 Obstetrics and Gynecology journal article on the potential of these pills to end a pregnancy:

The researchers sought to learn about the “mechanism of action” of the pills’ hormones when given after intercourse. How do the pills prevent identifiable pregnancies? Is it only by preventing ovulation or by also preventing implantation of a fertilized egg?  The authors conclude that the success of these hormones in preventing a recognizable pregnancy cannot be simply explained by preventing ovulation. Using conservative estimates, the study concludes that other mechanisms of action are at work up to 38 percent of the time. These mechanisms include post fertilization effects—actions against a fertilized but not yet implanted human egg.  Accordingly, those who consider life to begin at fertilization recognize the pills’ mechanisms as abortifacient. The “morning-after pill” can end a developing human life.

I do not see how it could possibly be argued that taking this “birth control” does not put a live human baby at risk.  This is not the first such drug manufactured for the purpose of producing chemical abortions.  In 1980 chemist Georges Teutsch released the infamous RU-486 pill to the world.  The RU-486 pill essentially worked by tricking the female body into believing that it was already pregnant, and thus the woman’s body would not allow hormones vital to the baby to be produced.  The pill, however, came with many faults.  Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former abortion doctor turned pro-life activist, wrote of the inglorious history of RU-486 in his book, The Hand of God.  He stated:

The drug [RU-486] is reliably dependable to produce abortion only up to the ninth week of pregnancy, and even then is only 95 percent effective.  The remaining 5 percent of women who have taken the drug either expel part of the pregnancy but continue to bleed and require a conventional suction evacuation or elect to carry the pregnancy to term with the potential for the delivery of  a seriously malformed child.  The drug…has caused the deaths of at least two women.

Dr. Nathanson then discusses the false claims made by abortion advocates on RU-486:

Extravagant claims have been made regarding other uses of RU-486.  It has been touted as being useful in the treatment of breast cancer (it is not), meningioma (a rare variety of brain tumor), Cushing’s syndrome (a disorder of the pituitary gland), depression, hypertension, Alzheimer’s disease, glaucoma, post-term pregnancy, and severe wounds and burns.  In short, it’s pro-abortion advocates have promoted the drug as a useful agent in the therapy of conditions and procedures unrelated to abortion, principally to distract the public attention from the drug’s only proven, reliable function: abortion.

Far from being some kind of wonder drug, though, RU-486 was a disaster.  The side effects it produced were grave and sometimes life-threatening.  Dr. Nathanson continues:

Because it acts on the reproductive system of women, it has the potential to alter or influence in a yet-undefined but probably adverse manner the offspring of succeeding generations.  Further, RU-486 is not reliably effective when taken by itself; forty-eight hours following its ingestion, the pregnant woman must then take another drug (misoprostol, a prostaglandin) to promote expulsion of the now-dead baby.  Misoprostol itself has an impressive list of undesirable and even dangerous side effects.

Nathanson noted that the side-effects for the RU-486 were so severe that even feminist organizations began to disprove of it.  The Institute on Women and Technology released a scathing critique on the drug in 1991.  Nathanson summarized the contents of the institute’s report by writing:

…far from transforming abortion into a safe and private experience a woman can perform for herself (always the promise of “morning-after” pills), RU-486 requires five separate trips to the abortion clinic, two ultrasound examinations, a waiting period between the administration of the RU-486 and the prostaglandin to expel the dead fetus, plus an unpredictable interval between the giving of the drug and the actual abortion; the terror of severe bleeding and cramping at home prior to the expulsion of the dead fetus, and the not-infrequent failure of the drug to produce abortion, in turn requiring conventional dilation and curettage (D & C) by suction. (As the institute put it, “double abortion jeopardy.”) Their conclusion: “No procedure requiring strict medical supervision and involving a host of risks and complications will help provide sexual and reproductive self-determination for women.”

In short, RU-486 came to be universally-renounced as a chemical abortion-producing drug.  Why do I go into such detail for a drug that is now obsolete and being replaced by something “new and improved”? Because for years RU-486 was trumpeted by social liberals as the answer to women’s reproductive needs.  They cried that it didn’t really produce abortions.  They downplayed all questions and concerns surrounding the drug. They repeatedly tried to legalize the drug in the United States (it was never approved by the FDA) and, when it wasn’t, they would bemoan the fact that America was not as sophisticated as the European countries that did sell it.  When all else failed, they made false claims about all of the wonderful benefits of the drug.  And now the same people are employing the same strategy with the new “morning after” pills. 

There are simply no tests or studies done on the long-term risks of the Plan B contraceptive.

John Wilke writes:

These are very powerful hormones. We do not know what the long-term effect will be. We certainly don’t know what effect they will have on young teenage women, and so far there are no studies to check this out.

The morning-after pill is a high dose of the birth control pill. Let's re-emphasize that fact: The morning-after pill Plan B is the birth control pill, except that it is stronger, equal to 25 regular birth-control pills.  The FDA has never approved a medicine as over the counter when a lower dose of the same drug requires a prescription.  It is ludicrous for feminist activists to support the sale of this drug without proper testing done.  It appears, perhaps, the welfare of the women buying this drug is not the primary concern for abortion advocates.  Keeping their lucrative business thriving has once again trumped all other concerns.