Much is being made about a GAO report that blames the
FDA for acting on politics instead of science in its
rejection of over-the-counter status for Plan B (the
Morning After Pill.) Supporters of OTC status for the
Morning After pill claim it is just another form of
birth control. But ponder this irony: If the Morning
After pill were simply a form of birth control, then
there’d be no story here. No form of oral contraceptive
is available over-the-counter. Birth control pills are
only available by prescription from a physician as is
Plan B, currently.
So there must be
something else going on. And yes, that something else is
politics but not at the hands of the FDA.
It’s the politics of
abortion.
To assert Plan B works
by stopping an egg from becoming fertilized as some
maintain is to ignore substantial evidence to the
contrary; namely, that Plan B is not “birth control” as
the term is generally understood but acts as an
abortifacient, killing a fertilized egg—a little human
being—by causing changes to the inside of the uterus
making implantation impossible.
A 1994 article in the
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology entitled,
“The morning-after pill; How long after?” explains: “If
an ovum is in the Fallopian tube, the process of
fertilization may begin within 15 to 30 minutes after
intercourse. The ‘morning after’ is already too late for
any contraceptive effect to intervene. Thus some
researchers conclude that post-coital drugs act
principally to terminate a viable pregnancy by
interfering with the endometrium: ... this mode of
action could explain the majority of cases where
pregnancies are prevented by the morning-after pill.”
Further evidence is
provided in a statement signed by over 100 physicians
entitled, “Morning After Pill or Morning Abortion Pill.”
“The U.S. Food and Drug
Administration has approved the use of ‘morning after
pills’ which may be taken up to 72 hours after sexual
intercourse as a ‘safe’ way to ‘avoid pregnancy.’ The
FDA has also authorized such drugs to be labeled and
sold in interstate commerce as ‘emergency
contraception.’ In fact, the FDA, which is supposed to
protect consumers from drug fraud, has authorized such
fraud by granting its permission to label drugs such as
Preven, Planned Parenthood's Plan B, etc., as
contraceptives. These drugs achieve their primary
anti-fertility effect by destroying a new and distinct
human being—with a unique genetic code different from
the mother's and father's—after the process of
fertilization has taken place, but before the child has
nestled into the mother's womb.”
And the makers of Plan
B admit on their website that it works not only by
“stopping the release of an egg from the ovary, and…prevent[ing]
the fertilization of an egg (the uniting of sperm with
the egg) [but it] may also work by preventing it from
attaching to the uterus (womb).”
There’s really little
difference between this method of ending a pregnancy and
one terminated by RU-486, the notorious chemical
abortifacient approved by the FDA in September 2000.
This marked the first time the FDA, whose purpose is to
ensure the “safety and effectiveness” of the nation’s
medicines, approved a drug whose sole pharmacological
property is the destruction of another human being.
This is a far cry from
the administration’s mandate and is in direct
contradiction to the Hippocratic Oath, an ancient code
of ethics followed by physicians. The oath stipulates,
in part: “I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if
asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner
I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce
abortion.”
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