FDA approves Plan B emergency contraception

GrandForksHerald.com ^ | 8/25/06 | Marie McCullough/The Philadelphia Inquirer

[Nextrush]

The Food and Drug Administration Thursday approved nonprescription sales of emergency contraception to women 18 and over, capping a long, tortuous saga about public health, politics and morality..........

Over-the-counter Plan B will be only in pharmacies, only from pharmacists, only to women with proof of age.......

Reaction was swift and polarized.

Women's health advocates and medical organizations had endorsed Barr's original 2003 application for over-the-counter sales without an age restriction. Thursday they applauded the FDA's ruling, but said it was long overdue, unneccessarily restrictive, and shaped by political pressure.......

Conservative political and religious groups decried the FDA's decision, contending that easier access.....will increase promiscuity, sexually-transmitted disease, and give rapists a way to eliminate evidence.......

Some anti-abortion groups also denounced Plan B as an abortion pill........

"It is no secret that Plan B is a deadly drug that.....can act to take the life of newly conceived babies in the days immediately following fertilization," said Judie Brown, president of American Life League........

the FDA delayed a decision.

That, in turn, infuriated U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Hillary Clinton, Democrats from Washington and New York repsectively, who blocked a confirmation vote on former FDA commissioner Lester Crawford until he promised quick action on Plan B.

He abruptly quit last Septmeber-without taking action.

Thursday, in a deja vu moment, Murray and Clinton said they would no longer block a confirmation vote on Crawford's replacment, acting FDA commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach...........

[Mom MD]

birth control pills, when taken appropriately, prevent ovulation and therefore conception. They do not cause abortion - I know plenty of pill babies due to missed or late pills, etc who were not harmed one iota by their mother's continuation of the birth control pills until they knew they were pregnant

[cpforlife.org]

Queen of AmeriKa, and mistress of Choice.

Hail Molech!!!

Pro-Life PING

Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.

[hocndoc]

According to all the evidence that we have - and some of it is very good - Plan B is not an abortifacient.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1689548/posts
Besides the article that I posted today, I've found research articles as far back as 1976 that show the same conclusions.

I'll be glad to send more data by regular email attachment, if anyone wants it.

However, someone somewhere needs to make a huge deal out of the Dem's blatant politicization of the approval of an Executive Branch appointee. (and I wish Eisenbach, et. al., hadn't caved this way - in fact, I remember Trovan far too well to be comfortable with the OTC status of a drug that's been proven not to reduce pregnancies or abortions.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=17316

[justche]

I don't really have a problem with birth control in general - (it didn't work for me like it's supposed to.)

I don't know what it does to our bodies to have that high of a spike in hormone's. Is it safe one time? What if someone overuses it? When is it not safe?

Let's say your three months along and now it's too late to take the Plan B? What happens if you go to a few stores and get several of them? Does it then cause an abortion? What does it do to the body? If just the normal pill causes a higher possibility of stroke when you are over 30 and add smoking in, what happens with this? Does that increase your risks even further?

I understand the concept, I still think that the target market for this isn't going to spend the $$ on the over the counter form when it's been available for free at planned parenthood.

[Brian Allen]

<< Nextrush
The White House doesn't run the FDA directly. >>

The administration has pretty much no say with any department, secretariat and/or agency, evey one of which has for decades been systemically in the grip of the effectively-corrupt activist "Democrats" who from the late 1029s have owned, operated and controlled every branch of every level of America's local, state and feral gummints.

[hocndoc]

Progesterone may not be very good for a three month fetus, but it won't cause a miscarriage.

Take a look at this page, from a website on a natural family planning advocate:
http://www.woomb.org/bom/science/physiology.html

see how the progesterone (the pregnenediol in pink, in figure 1) goes up after ovulation? The level of progesterone actually doubles each day and continues to increase in pregnancy.
http://repro-med.net/papers/progestlrg.gif

[Lexinom]

Look at it this way: with each little person executed, the coming Day of Wrath becomes that much sweeter for those on the right side, and that much more terrific for the enemies of God. Patty Murray, unless she reforms her ways, will burn in Hell for all eterity, perhaps hearing faint strains of the songs of the millions of fellow human beings she helped put down.

[linda_22003]

Yeah, why have a woman escape the suffering you so dearly want her to have as a punishment? </sarc>

[linda_22003]

It has been a part of the "rape kit" for years now.

[linda_22003]

For at least the last twenty years, doctors have advised their patients to double or triple up on oral contraceptives in case of unprotected pregnancy. That's all this is, and it's been around for a long time.

[TheBattman]

That study had no way to test if fertilized Ovum were prevented from implantation. It's conclusions in that regard are complete conjecture.

[Lunatic Fringe]

It's not an abortion pill since it does not end pregnancy.

The extreme Pro-Lifers do an injustice by attempting to mislead the public on what Plan B does.

[hocndoc]

I don't know of an ethical way to absolutely prove whether or not the embryo is rejected. (just as I can't prove that the thinned uterine lining of an anovulatory nursing mother doesn't increase her lost embryos)

But, this study came very close: Surgically sterilized ovulating women who had serial ultrasounds, urinary and serum hormone levels and even uterine biopsies.

Not only that, but all the methods appear to have been designed to avoid any unethical practices, such as one of the studies which included women with IUD's.

This lead investigator did a similar study in Cereus monkeys and found no effect on implantation or uterine lining.

[hocndoc]

"Cereus" should be "Cebus" monkeys.

[MHGinTN]

So don't vote for George Bush in 2008. Sheesh! When you go to the research and do the homework to see what this pill actually does, then you can spew your negatives, if you dare, after finding out that it is not a proven that the pill ends the life of newly conceived embryo-aged humans.

[monkapotamus]

[Missouri gal]

This decision is so bad it is hard to know where to begin, but let's try:
1) Women DIE from using contraceptives. Acute risks include heart attacks, deep vein thrombosis, strokes and other blood clots. There is also the long term increased risk of various types of cancer. The lousy excuse for leaving this junk on the market is that physicians will CAREFULLY screen their patients for risk factors. Notice how the FDA has completely abdicated responsibility for this with regard to Plan B.
2) Sexual abusers of all stripes, including the increasingly common slavers, as well as the garden variety child molesters and date rapists are THRILLED with this decision. They think they have just been granted a FREE PASS to do whatever they want and they will get away with it. Expect a meteoric rise in all forms of sexual abuse of women.
3)Girls who are tempted to become sexually active have more incentive to go ahead, and less of a defense. She says "no;" he holds out a box of Plan B. Studies have already shown that the more available this drug, the more likely teens are to use it, even increasing use to several times a month. Nobody knows how that affects their health. It hasn't been studied. We all certainly know, as does that scoundrel von Eschenbach, that the "requirement" that it will be sold only to girls 18 and over is unenforceable. FDA could care less if your daughter is destroyed.
4) Women get more STD's using map's than other ways of contracepting. There is some evidence that the hormones hurt the immune system. Expect more STD's.
5) Plan B IS ABORTIFACIENT. Moral relativists may sniff, but every one of us was once as vulnerable as these tiny lives. Even Jesus, so Merciful but so Just, was once a vulnerable embryo.

The solution to this crazy decision, if there is one, is for anyone who has lost or will lose a wife or a daughter to map's to sue Barr laboratories AND the FDA. Expose them. Shame them. And take the money they worship away from them!

[Raquel]

Plan B can work as an abortifacient drug, if conception occurs. Please read my article at www.raquelwalker.com and link to Dangers of Plan B on the left top of page. If you believe the nonsense that Barr and the abortion proponents shill about, you are the moron.

[Missouri gal]

hocnoc, your assertion that morning after pills do not cause abortions is just propaganda. I don't care in the least which Population Council goon you want to quote. They justify their lie by trying to redefine pregnancy as beginning at implantation. No sale!

[Raquel]

This will not be end of abortion, because just like all other chemical contraceptives, they are not foolproof, and abortion is the ultimate prevention. It's the whole idea that pregnancy is some kind of disease, that the sexual revolution did something good for the country, and life, no matter how small, should not be respected. Planned Parenthood would never support something that actually decreases abortion, because that is their business. They don't want to minimize but increase. If the abortionists really wanted to stop abortions, all they have to do is show the mom a sonogram of their child. 9 times out of 10 if the mom sees a sonogram she will not abort, just because she can see her child on the screen, and they realize that this is no insignificant "bunch of cells", but Planned Parenthood stays clear of sonograms, even if the mother asks to see it. Don't fall for their tricks, my friend.