Family Fact: Emergency contraception, or abortion?

Family Quote: Abortion, or contraception?

Family Research Abstract: Masters of the Obvious

"[I]n the last year, so-called emergency contraception has started to come out of the shadows. Three million doses of one pill have been sold since 1999, and the maker of another says its sales increased 50 percent last year.

On Thursday, New Mexico became the fourth state to allow pharmacists to dispense the drug directly to women, enabling them to avoid trips to a doctor for prescriptions. Legislators or pharmacists in at least 14 states are agitating to do the same.

...Researchers say they still do not know how the pill works. It either delays ovulation or prevents a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus. Depending on which brand is used and how early it is taken after sex, it prevents pregnancy in 75 to 89 percent of cases. New research shows that it can prevent pregnancy even if taken five days after sex."

(Source: Kate Zernike, "Morning-After Pill May Go Over the Counter," The New York Times, May 19, 2003; http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/19/health/19PILL.html?th.) 

"The "morning-after pill" or "emergency contraception" is taken within hours or days of intercourse. The pill either prevents ovulation or, if that has already occurred, blocks an already fertilized human egg from implanting in the mother's uterus. The latter effect is of particular concern to individuals who hold the traditional scientific view that human life begins at fertilization, when sperm and egg unite to form a genetically complete, developing individual.

The medical principle of informed consent requires that doctors and drug manufacturers clearly explain this potential abortifacient effect so that women can make a choice consistent with their conscience. Such informed consent, however, threatens the agenda of abortion advocates who would deny the humanity and intrinsic value of the human embryo."

(Source:  Jonathon Imbody, "Two different pills," The Washington Times, May 4, 2003.) 

Medical researchers in Brazil recently have issued warnings that misoprostol, used to induce chemical abortions in Brazil, the United States, and abroad, may cause severe birth defects in children if used by pregnant women.

In the American Journal of Medical Genetics, four physicians from Sarah Hospital in Brazil, along with another researcher from Nagasaki University School of Medicine in Japan, write that misoprostol, which has a legitimate use in treating gastric-duodenal cancer, is often misused for low-cost abortions, even though abortion is illegal in Brazil.

For those infants who survive misoprostol exposure and escape abortion, the congenital malformations are grave: "The most striking manifestations common to the patients were growth retardation, underdeveloped bones, short equinovarus feet, rigidity of multiple joints with skin dimples and webs, decreased movement of legs, hypoplasia or atrophy of limb muscles, and absent tendon reflexes." Other researchers have noted cranial nerve deficiency, delayed motor and mental development, the Möbius anomaly, and hydrocephaly.

It seems that a drug often used for the killing of children may cause them harm, as well.

(Source: Katia-Edni F. A. Coelho, et al, "Misoprostol Embryotoxicity: Clinical Evaluation of Fifteen Patients with Arthogryposis," American Journal of Medical Genetics 95 [2000]: 297-301.)

[Editor's note:  Misoprostol is the active ingredient in RU-486, used to chemically induce abortions.  This is not to be confused with the so-called "emergency contraceptive" or "morning-after" pills referenced above.  While each may cause the death of a child, they are, as Mr. Imbody writes, "Two different pills."  -Karl J. Shields]