In a recent
National Public Radio broadcast
and accompanying article entitled “Morning-After Pills Don’t Cause
Abortion, Studies Say,” NPR journalist Julie Rovner reported that the
Obama administration’s contraceptive mandate doesn’t force people to pay
for abortion-inducing drugs. The article focuses on drugs commonly
known as “morning-after” pills, which actually can be used to stop
pregnancy for up to
three-to-
five days after unprotected sex.
Rovner’s argument consists of two major points: the first is that
blocking the implantation of fertilized eggs does not constitute
abortion, and the second is that morning-after pills do not block the
implantation of fertilized eggs. Both of these claims are built upon
half-truths and outright falsehoods that become evident through a
comprehensive look at the scientific facts.
When does life begin?
Rovner supports her first point simply by quoting Susan F. Wood, an
associate professor of health policy at George Washington University and
a former assistant commissioner for women’s health at the FDA. Rovner
sets the stage for this by stating that scientists thought morning-after
pills “might make it more difficult for a fertilized egg to implant in a
woman’s uterus,” but:
Technically, that’s not an abortion, says Wood. “We know
that about half of fertilized eggs never stick around. They just pass
out of the woman’s body,” she says. “An abortifacient is something that
interrupts an established pregnancy.”
This claim, which NPR reports as a fact,
stands in stark contrast to medical literature and the wide-ranging
views of physicians, which reveal that what constitutes an abortifacient
is a matter ofgreat dispute. This is because the start of pregnancy
typically is defined in two ways: either fertilization (when sperm
unites with egg to form an embryo) or implantation (when the embryo
implants in the uterus).
Medical literature abounds with the use of both definitions, and a
1998 survey published in the
Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine found
that obstetricians/gynecologists were evenly split on this issue, with
50% stating that pregnancy begins at fertilization, and 48% stating that
pregnancy begins at implantation. The
Encyclopedia of Birth Control aptly summarizes the situation:
Abortifacients, whether chemicals or objects, cause
abortions, the termination of a pregnancy. However, because the
definition of pregnancy varies, opinions vary greatly over just which
contraceptives or fertility control methods involves abortifacients.
Although views about when pregnancy begins vary among medical
professionals, the science of embryology is clear that the genetic
composition of preborn humans is formed at the point of
fertilization, and as the textbook
Molecular Biology explains,
this genetic information is “the very basis of life itself.” It also
determines gender, eye color, hair color, facial features, and it
influences characteristics such as intelligence and personality. Hence,
a
unique human life is
formed at fertilization, and Wood’s point that “half of fertilized eggs
never stick around” is as relevant to the issue of abortion as the
statement that “all people eventually die” is relevant to the issue of
homicide. At its core, this is about the difference between actively
ending a life and nature taking its course.
NPR also neglects to report that Wood is an active
political donor to Barack Obama and
EMILY’s List,
a political action committee “dedicated to electing pro-choice
Democratic women to office.” From 2008 through 2012, Wood’s donations to
EMILY’s List totaled $6,100, which was the most she gave to any
candidate or political action committee. Throughout the article, it is
clear when Rovner is citing someone who is pro-life, but she leaves
Wood’s ideology unmentioned while uncritically accepting her claim that
blocking the implantation of embryos does not constitute abortion.
Do the drugs destroy embryos?
Next, Rovner states that “people like” Gene Rudd, senior vice
president of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations and a
practicing OB-GYN, “worry that even if what the drugs do is not
technically abortion, it’s still objectionable if it happens after
fertilization.” Rovner then proceeds to argue that science doesn’t
support the notion that “emergency contraceptives” block implantation.
This second major point is also deceptively argued.
The manufacturers of all the pills in question have been required by
the FDA to affirm that the drugs may block implantation. As such, the
official company website for
ella states that the drug “may also work by preventing attachment to the uterus.” The website for
Plan B One-Step states,
“It is possible that Plan B One-Step® may also work by … preventing
attachment (implantation) to the uterus (womb).” And the website for
Next Choice states that the drug “works by preventing … attachment of the egg (implantation) to the uterus (womb).”
However, in June 2012, the
New York Times published
an article claiming that these labels “do not reflect what the science shows.” NPR cites this
Times article
as “fairly definitive research” showing that the Plan B drug only works
“by preventing ovulation, and therefore, fertilization.” The article,
written by Pam Belluck, asserts that “studies have not established that
emergency contraceptive pills prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in
the womb, leading scientists say.” Who are these leading scientists?
One of them is Susan Wood, the same professor quoted by NPR. Like NPR, the
Times fails
to reveal that she is an active political donor to Barack Obama and
EMILY’S list. Another key authority quoted in both of these articles is
Diana Blithe, a biochemist and contraceptive researcher at the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development. As it turns out, she
also is an active
political donor to
Barack Obama and gave him $2,500 in 2012. Naturally, political
associations don’t determine whether someone is right or wrong, but both
articles rely upon the assertions of these individuals to make key
points and quote them as if they were neutral scientific authorities.
The
Times quotes several other authorities to support its
claims, but the only clinical evidence presented in either of these
articles are three studies conducted in Australia and Chile.
The
Timesdescribes
all of the studies with a combined total of five sentences that provide
a short synopsis, the years the studies were conducted, the name of one
of the researchers, and a quote from Blithe. No data is presented, no
links to the studies are provided, no titles are revealed, and no
journals are cited. Just Facts identified
two of the studies, one of which is also cited by NPR, which in contrast to the
Times, does provide
a link to it. However, the details of these two studies actually undermine the central narratives of NPR and the
Times.
The study cited by NPR determined how many women became pregnant
after having unprotected sex during their fertile cycle and then taking
the active ingredient in Plan B/Next Choice. Of 87 women who had
not ovulated
before taking the drug, none of them became pregnant, although based on
the known odds of becoming pregnant, the study estimated that 13
typically would have become pregnant if they had not taken the drug.
Conversely, of 35 women who had ovulated before taking the drug, 6 of
them became pregnant, which is close to the 7 pregnancies that would be
expected if they had not taken the drug.
These pregnancies among the women who ovulated before taking the drug
provide a measure of evidence that the drug is not effective if
administered after ovulation. Based on this minuscule sample of 6
pregnancies, NPR concluded that Plan B does not block implantation. The
logic behind this, to quote NPR, is that the drug “stops an egg from
being released from a woman’s ovary and thus prevents any chance of
fertilization and pregnancy.” For the drug to be reasonably effective
through this mechanism, it should prevent ovulation until six days after
intercourse because sperm can live for this long in a women’s body. As
explained in the textbook
Langman’s Medical Embryology, “sperm deposited in the reproductive tract up to 6 days prior to ovulation can survive to fertilize oocytes [eggs].”
This is where the NPR and
Times stories unravel. Although
the abstract of study gives no indication of any significant caveats, if
one is willing to purchase access to the full study (at a
cost of $31.50)
and examine its details, vital information is revealed. The study found
that at least two thirds of the 87 women who had not yet ovulated
before taking the drug actually ovulated within five days of taking the
drug. This clashes with NPR’s claim that the drug “stops an egg from
being released from a woman’s ovary and thus prevents any chance of
fertilization and pregnancy.” Likewise, it undermines the
Time’s
claim that “scientists say the pills work up to five days after sex,
primarily stalling an egg’s release until sperm can no longer fertilize
it.”
The study’s authors attempt to explain this result by theorizing that
the drug causes “increased cervical mucus viscosity” that “impedes the
migration of sperm….” In other words, they say it makes the mucous in a
woman’s reproductive tract so thick that sperm can’t swim to the egg. To
support this theory, the authors cite a
1974 study in the journal
Contraception that found the drug had such an effect, but the authors fail to mention that a
2002 study in
the same journal found that the drug “affects sperm function only at
high concentration and the contribution of these effects to emergency
contraception is unlikely to be significant.”
Even more significantly, a
2007 study in the journal
Human Reproduction found
that at the dosage used for emergency contraception, “the drug had no
effect on the quality of cervical mucus or in the penetration of
spermatozoa to the uterine cavity.” The
second study identified by Just Facts that was cryptically mentioned in the
Times is merely an extension of the first study, with a larger sample size (8 pregnancies instead of 6) and similar results.
So in summation, the scientific evidence is compelling that the
active ingredient in Plan B and Next Choice doesn’t delay ovulation
beyond the timeframe that egg and sperm can unite to form a human life.
Furthermore, the drug does not impair ability of sperm to swim to eggs.
This doesn’t mean that a yet unknown mechanism of the drug may prevent
sperm and egg from uniting, but it does mean that the principal claims
of NPR, the
New York Times, and the majority of scientists they cite are not consistent with the known facts of this matter.
What about ella and Italy?
Ella has a different active ingredient than the other two drugs, and the
Times and
NPR cite no specific clinical evidence to support their assertions that
the drug probably does not derail implantation. They merely rely upon
claims from scientists about unidentified studies, and both of the
articles cite Blithe as their primary authority on this subject.
Both articles also point to the nation of Italy as evidence that
ella doesn’t cause abortions. To quote the
Times:
European medical authorities have not mentioned an effect
on implantation on Ella’s label, and after months of scrutiny, Ella was
approved for sale in overwhelmingly Catholic Italy, where laws would
have barred it if it could be considered to induce abortion, said Erin
Gainer, chief executive of Ella’s manufacturer, Paris-based HRA Pharma.
Based upon the statement above, one would believe that Italy bans
abortions and would not have approved this drug unless the government
was certain that it did not cause abortions.
The reality is
that abortion has been legal in Italy since 1978, and in 2009, the
Italian agency responsible for approving drugs authorized the of use
RU-486, which
unambiguously is an abortifacient.
How about IUDs?
In this article, NPR doesn’t mention IUDs or intrauterine devices, which the Obama administration is also
forcing insurance plans to cover and to do so without copays. The
Times article
mentions in passing that “scientists say” IUDs “can work to prevent
pregnancy after an egg has been fertilized.” This is borne out by a
wealth of evidence including a
2002 paper on
the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which shows that
“both prefertilization and postfertilization mechanisms of action
contribute significantly to the effectiveness of all types of
intrauterine devices.”
Likewise, the Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human
Services, which is the same department that issued the
contraceptive/abortifacient mandate, has published a “Birth control
methods fact sheet,” which
states that
copper IUDs can keep “the fertilized egg from implanting in the lining
of the uterus,” and hormonal IUDs affect “the ability of a fertilized
egg to successfully implant in the uterus.”
Thus, regardless of whether Plan B, Next Choice, or
ella cause
abortion, the Obama administration is forcing insurers, and thus, their
customers to pay for devices that destroy embryos before they implant,
which many doctors, scientists, and citizens consider to be abortion.
The article originally appeared at JustFacts and is reprinted with permission.
Source: LiveAction News
Dr.
David Brewer is a former abortionist who spoke at the “Meet the
Abortion Providers” convention in Chicago which was hosted by the
Pro-Life Action League. The full text of his speech can be found 
The Abortion 
The
Abortion Survivors Network website also holds the story of a boy named
Josiah Presley. Josiah’s story was originally told on the Abolish Human
Abortion website. Josiah’s 
Posts
