NARAL: The radical right's campaign to stop birth control

NARAL email...

[snowstorm12]

Drug companies have been trying to gets these pills otc.

The physician and pharmacists conscience movement could be the thing that puts morning after pills and possibly regular BC pills otc.

FDA makes the decision on emergency contraception pills OTC in Sept. It was previously denied by the FDA because they were concerned about effects on younger girls. The drug company called their bluff, applied again with the necessary age restriction. For some strange reason it's been stalled ever since even after the panel approved in overwhelming numbers.

[Im4LifeandLiberty]

The primary objection to birth control pills here is that many of the modern pills do not thwart ovulation or alter the viscosity of cervical mucus enough to prevent fertilization, but functions much of the time by thinning the endometrium, which prevents the newly-conceived human being from implanting against the uterine wall. Hormonal birth control (this is also the case with IUDs) then acts not as a contraceptive but as an abortifacient. For people who believe that life begins at conception, the political problem is not one of religious belief or sexual morality; it is one of human ethics-- the being that would be protected against the morning-after pill, cloning, or embryonic stem cell research must also be protected against the more common causes of its destruction.
I'm sure NARAL does worry about this, but I don't imagine there is much of a threat to abortifacient BC at a time in which Partial-Birth Abortion bans are being overruled in some states as unconstitutional.

[pa mom]

But eventually, or ideally, that is the goal, to ban bc pills. Correct?

[Im4LifeandLiberty]

Pills that were not abortifacients would not have to be banned under laws that protect the unborn. If someone wants to change her body chemistry to prevent conception, that is her business; if someone wants to chemically abort her baby, that is the baby's business, so that baby must be protected. Should contraception be illegal? Probably not. Should pills that kill human beings be banned? Yes. While the high-dose pills were actual contraceptives, today's Mircette, Desogen, Ortho Tricyclen-Lo, Yasmin, and all of the patches prevent implantation, and like the morning-after pill, often cause early abortions. Those of us who oppose surgical and medical abortion cannot claim ideological or moral consistency while supporting the abortifacient Pill.