PP Uses Internet to Push Abortifacients

Imagine this scenario: Frantic with fear of getting pregnant, Jane Doe leaps out of bed, flips on the switch to her computer and tells her lover, “Don’t worry John, we can just order some emergency contraceptives off the Internet.  The pills will be sent Fed-Ex right to our door.”  Barely finished with her sentence, she jumps up and scurries down the hall.  “We don’t even have to wait that long,” she yells.  “I just remembered, the last time I visited Planned Parenthood, they gave me this pack of ‘EC-to-Go.’”
 
Do you find this hard to believe?  Planned Parenthood considers it an advancement in women’s health and is spearheading an Internet campaign to make attaining emergency contraception easier, faster and more convenient.  Emergency contraception, claims PP, could prevent 1.7 million unintended pregnancies and 800,000 abortions annually. 1  

Why the Internet?  

Currently in most states, emergency contraception pills [ECPs] are available by prescription only—a requirement that Planned Parenthood views as a threat to women’s health.2  The pills are most effective within 72 hours, a time frame creating difficulty in obtaining the meds.  In one study, referenced by the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA), “where pharmacists prescribed ECPs, 50 percent of women seeking emergency contraception reported that they sought ECPs on a weekend or after 6 p.m. on a weeknight, times when it may have been difficult to contact their regular reproductive health care provider.  In addition, 18 percent of these women did not have a current health care provider.”  Also, according to ABCNEWS.com, “more than 80 percent of ob-gyns say they don’t offer [ECPs] to their patients.”  Hence, states PP, “lack of available appointments and limited practice hours necessitate additional venues to facilitate access.”  

Providing prescriptions for ECPs prior to need at routine office visits, argues the AMWA and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), is one way to ensure women have the pills when they need them.  Planned Parenthood accordingly hands out “EC-to-Go.”  

Taking this one step further, Planned Parnethood’s Internet campaign arranges for “prescriptions” to be provided without women ever being seen by a physician.3  Rather, the “patient” logs on and fills out a medical survey that is reviewed by a nurse practitioner and forwarded to the nearest drug store or clinic.  E-prescriptions are already available through Planned Parenthood of Georgia and Illinois (thus far for residents only) and via Virtual Medical Group, an on-line for-profit medical provider. Planned Parenthood charges $40 for the pills and Virtual Medical Group $74, if picked up at a local pharmacy, $99 for doorstep delivery.  Tania Malik, CEO for Virtual Medical Group, states that they “get 36-40 requests a week,” reportedly “a lot for a single kind of medication.”

As access to ECPs grows fast and furious, so does the debate surrounding these tiny pills.  Internet availability intensified the debate over E-prescriptions—prescriptions granted without patients ever seeing a doctor—and heightened the dispute over the pills’ function.  A long-standing controversy exists over whether ECPs cause abortion, or, as Planned Parenthood claims, prevent it. The primary cause of this debate is due to the faulty notion—held by Planned Parenthood, the AMWA, the National Institute of Health and the ACOG—that pregnancy begins at the moment of “implantation.”  According to these organizations, ECPs work prior to implantation and are thereby contraceptives, not abortifacients.  Planned Parenthood even goes so far as to say that “because EC prevents pregnancy, it reduces the need for induced abortions.”  

Accurate medical facts show otherwise. As Mildred L. Shumard, R.N., indicated in an article appearing in The Sarasota Herald Tribune: “Being rather skeptical, I consulted my dictionary.  Contraception, as a noun, means ‘a contraceptive agent or device’ and as an adjective, ‘capable of preventing conception.’…Conception occurs when sperm fertilizes an ovum, forming a zygote.”  Thus, she concludes, “how can Preven be a contraceptive?”  This pill’s primary function is not to prohibit conception, but to inhibit implantation of an already conceived human being.4  Concurring, the counsel  for  Missouri’s abortion industry in Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services states, “the most common forms of birth control…IUD’s, low-dose birth control pills [not to mention high dose pills, like ECPs]…act as abortifacients.”

Even the American Medical Association, who believes ECPs should be stocked in our homes like Band-Aids and aspirin, hosts an article in its “Archives of Family Medicine” stating, “Many reproductive scientists have defined pregnancy as occurring at the point of or some point after implantation.  However, this definition does not change the fact that some patients, for personal, scientific, moral, or religious reasons, identify the start of human life at fertilization.  For such patients, a form of contraception that allows fertilization and then causes the loss of the preembryo or embryo may be unacceptable.  Regardless of the personal beliefs of the physician or provider about the mechanism of [oral contraceptives], it is important that the patients have information relevant to their own beliefs and value system.”  Planned Parenthood does not provide such information, but claims, “Emergency contraception prevents pregnancy and helps prevent the need for abortion; it itself is not a form of abortion.”  

FOOTNOTES

1.  Today’s most popular pills are Preven and Plan B.  Preven combines large doses of estrogens and progestins similar to the estrogen and progesterone produced by a woman’s body.  The regimen includes taking two pills 72 hours after unprotected sex and two more 12 hours later.  Plan B, containing only progestin or levonorgestrel, can, according to PP, reduce pregnancy by 85 percent.  Copper-bearing intra-uterine devices (IUD’s), inserted up to five days after unprotected sex, can reduce pregnancy by 99 percent, they claim.
2.  Effective 1 January 2002 California pharmacists may dispense EC without a prescription, according to Senate Bill 1169 recently signed into law by Governor Gray Davis.  Washington state has a similar law.
3.  As an article in the Medical Post, Volume 35, No. 24, June 22, 1999, notes, even Planned Parenthood’s own pamphlet “Emergency Contraceptive Pill” states “It is important that a doctor ensures that there are no medical reasons that would make taking the pill harmful to the woman’s health.” Additionally, Canadian Physicians for Life state that “The policy to make the morning-after-pill available without a doctor’s prescription puts women and girls at higher risk for disease and sexual health problems.  Physical and clinical examination by a physician are essential to good healthcare: to counsel patients and determine sexually-transmitted diseases, abusive relationships and related health issues.”
4.  As outlined in a 1994 article in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, by Dr. Anita Nelson, “the predominant effect of the morning after pill is in the disturbance of the normal development and function of the endometrium which renders the nidation site unsuitable for implantation.”


Jennifer Taylor is a freelance writer for HLI.

(January 2002 HLI Reports)