The right wing assault on family planning is very real. Missouri just banned state clinics from providing contraception, but look closer and we see opposition to the morning after pill that is widespread in conservative circles. On a personal level, many may disagree with it, and that is fine, but attempting to stop the approval of Plan B. From the Culture Campaign candidate questionnaire.
Q: 4. Allowing the Food and Drug Administration to approve non-prescription sale of the “morning-after” abortion drugs (e.g. Plan B): Support, Oppose, or Undecided?
A: Oppose
The far right wing is trying to sell Plan B as RU-486 which it is not. Steve Chapman covered this in a recent column.
But it turns out the reputation is groundless. The best scientific evidence we have indicates that the morning-after pill serves to block fertilization, while having no effect on implantation. That makes it contraception, not abortion.
As a longtime pro-lifer, I think anti-abortion groups had solid grounds to oppose the morning-after pill when its function was unclear–as I did. But given what we now know, it’s a grave mistake to keep opposing it. In fact, there are grounds for celebration: A drug once believed to produce abortion is found to prevent abortion.….
This week, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, released a report that gave a withering critique of the agency’s handling of the issue. It concluded that high-level FDA officials decided against Plan B before the scientific review had been done, as part of an approach the GAO described with such adjectives as “unusual,” “novel” and “unprecedented”–a polite, bureaucratic way of saying “outrageous.”
The Republican War on Science continues. Nevermind the science, attempt to block safe drugs from being approved.
I wish more people knew about the recent research on Plan B. I’ve seen plenty of pro-choicers also claiming that it prevents implantation of an embryo (they just don’t have a problem with that).
The recent research? You mean this research that Chapman cites?
In June, Chicago Tribune reporters Judy Peres and Jeremy Manier reported a surprising consensus among experts that “there is no scientific evidence the pills prevent implantation — and considerable evidence they work mainly by blocking the release of an egg from the woman’s ovary, so no embryo is formed.”
They cited a study by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm which found that the pill’s effects “involve either blockade or delay of ovulation . . . rather than inhibition of implantation.” Dr. David Archer, director of clinical research at the Contraceptive Research and Development Program of Eastern Virginia Medical School, said “there’s no evidence scientifically” that Plan B is an abortifacient.
The GAO report agrees. The drug, it concluded, can prevent pregnancy by impeding sperm and by delaying ovulation, but it has “not been shown to cause a post-fertilization event — a change in the uterus that could interfere with implantation of a fertilized egg.”
Plan B does nothing that the Birth Control Pill doesn’t do. Should we have prevented it from being FDA approved?
I was unclear. I agree with you and with Chapman. I wish more people understood that Plan B does not prevent implantation, instead of spreading misinformation.
The GAO report agrees. The drug, it concluded, can prevent pregnancy by impeding sperm and by delaying ovulation, but it has “not been shown to cause a post-fertilization event — a change in the uterus that could interfere with implantation of a fertilized egg.”
Set aside any qualms anyone might have on animal research for a second…
A study at the Catholic University of Chile studied that very topic using monkeys. Levonorgestrel (aka Plan B) has no effect on uterine implantation of the embryo.
Levonorgestrel is also one of the ingredients in the Birth Control Pill itself.
Re Chapman: I guess he’s not part of the movement, then. What with being principled and all that.