Commentary: The New 'Emergency Contraception': A Dark and Deadly Pill

The bottom line is that these chemical weapons can be destroyers of children. They are also deadly in many other ways.

GLADE PARK, CO (Catholic Online) - Yet another chemical weapon has reared its ugly head, directed at the once safest place on earth, a mothers womb. The London Associated Press reported that a "new type of morning-after pill" has been developed which is "more effective than the most widely used drug." It is allegedly taken to prevent pregnancies, according to a report published in the British Medical Journal.

The new drug, ulipristal acetate, sold as ellaOne, is currently available in Europe with a doctor's prescription and is reported to "work" for up to 5 days after having "unprotected" sex. While the drug is not legally available elsewhere, given FDA trends it is likely the drug will become available for purchase in the U.S. once the required studies have been completed.

The AP reported that "Levonorgestrel, the most widely used emergency contraceptive pill, is only effective if women take it within three days of having sex. It is sold under various brand names including Levonelle and Plan B and is available in more than 140 countries, including the United States, Canada and many countries in western Europe. In nearly 50 of those countries women can get it without a prescription."

In 2006, the U.S. became one of the countries in which women can obtain Plan B without a prescription, provided they were eighteen years of age or older. However, on March 23, 2009, U.S. District Judge Edward Korman of New York ordered the Food and Drug Administration to allow 17-year-old girls to purchase Plan B over the counter. Judge Korman also directed the FDA to reevaluate lifting all age restrictions.

It is important that people understand what "emergency contraception" drugs like ulipristal acetate and levonorgestrel (Plan B pill) actually do. The bottom line is that while they sometimes prevent pregnancy, other times they terminate it, killing the new human life. They often act as abortifacients.

The FDA reports that "Plan B One-Step is believed to act as an emergency contraceptive principally by preventing ovulation or fertilization (by altering tubal transport of sperm and/or ova). In addition, it may inhibit implantation (by altering the endometrium). It is not effective once the process of implantation has begun." (www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2009/021998lbl.pdf).

Note the FDA states that Plan B "may inhibit implantation". A fertilized egg that is prevented from implantation dies as a result. This is killing plain and simple. It is an attack on innocent human life; it is one person saying to another, "I am sovereign ruler over your life. I hereby deny your right to life." Further, whether or not emergency contraceptive drugs "principally" act by preventing ovulation or fertilization does not mean that their use is not immoral.

The Catechism of the catholic Church reminds us that contraceptive use is intrinsically evil: "...every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil (cf. CCC, No. 2370; HV 14).

The manner in which these "new drugs" are being trumpeted as "more effective at preventing unwanted pregnancies" is deplorable. Since when are people "unwanted" items which may be disposed of at will? Since when may a child be extinguished at whim by purchasing an innocuous looking, neatly wrapped package and popping a few pills? As dark as these inclinations are many have arrived at them - in fact embraced them - due to the worship of unmoored and uninhibited sexual 'pleasure'.

Drug companies rush to meet these "needs" of modern man, whether they be immoral matters little, for the bottom line is profit. In their laboratories they employ "mad scientists" who labor away day by day, concocting the next weapon which will be wielded against human life, a weapon which will advance the culture of death and the worship of this false god. Those deluded by the lie fork out millions upon millions of dollars in order to satiate this desire for unrestrained sex with no consequences.

This mindset is a byproduct of the culture of death. It manifests itself in comments like this one found on the FDA website: "Any families with teen girls should have access over the counter to Plan B, as should any women of childbearing age. . . . Plan B helps the women [sic] flush the horror away of conquest, humiliation, and loss of control." Such comments shine a spotlight on the present darkness.

Where do we even begin in countering these malevolent attitudes? "Any families with teen girls should have access over the counter" to chemical weapons which often kill children? And if a woman experiences the "horror" of "conquest, humiliation, and loss of control," she ought to, therefore, pop a pill and possibly kill her unborn child? The type of thinking displayed in the comment is so far from reasonable, so dark, so impoverished that it is difficult to understand how a person could have actually written it, let alone believed it. This type of thinking is capable of inflicting severe damage not only on the child in the sanctuary of the womb but the woman ingesting the chemical weapon.

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While some women are not immediately aware of the deadly nature of these chemical weapons, a woman who has consumed them is likely to one day realize she might possibly have killed her unborn child: intense emotional and spiritual suffering flows from such a realization. These chemical weapons can turn women into post-abortion mothers whose lives are lived in a private hell as a result of the nearly unbearable guilt and sadness experienced through coming face to face with the reality of abortion.

We can only speculate as to how many unborn children die each day as a result of these deadly weapons marketed as nice little tablets which are the "answer" to the "problem" of "unwanted pregnancies". And that is part of the dilemma, isn't it? Our culture is programmed to look for an answer to every ailment in a pill. Depressed? No problem. There's a pill for that. Can't sleep? There's a pill for that too. Anxious? Relief is as close as the drugstore.

"Unprotected" sex? Not to worry. Just pop a little, cheap, easy to swallow pill. While there may be a false intellectual disconnect from the abortive capabilities of these chemical weapons, the truth is that in swallowing one of these deadly pills people become accomplices in the very darkest inclinations of the culture of death.

It has been the constant teaching of the Catholic Church that human life begins at the moment of conception. We all had a beginning and that moment we became a person. If we are a person now, we were a person that first moment we began to exist, that moment in which our father's sperm joined with our mother's egg. It is at that moment, at conception, that human life begins and a human person exists. Science has confirmed this fact again and again. The Natural Law written on every human heart has revealed it to our conscience. If a chemical weapon had poisoned any one of us at that moment, we would not be here. We all know that would be unjust.

The Pontifical Academy for Life released a statement on October 31, 2000 explaining the real dangers of "morning-after" pills: "The morning-after pill is a hormone-based preparation ... which, within and no later than 72 hours after a presumably fertile act of sexual intercourse, has a predominantly "anti-implantation" function, i.e., it prevents a possible fertilized ovum (which is a human embryo), by now in the blastocyst stage of its development (fifth to sixth day after fertilization), from being implanted in the uterine wall by a process of altering the wall itself. The final result will thus be the expulsion and loss of this embryo." Note that Plan B has that same "anti-implantation" function as the FDA website attests. We have no reason to believe that anti-life drugs like ulipristal acetate will not operate to some extent in the same manner.

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The bottom line is that these chemical weapons can be destroyers of children. They are also deadly in many other ways. Unfortunately, our secularist society is intent on promoting their use ever-more widely, making them available over the counter to as many women as possible. This is nothing more than people encouraging people to kill other people. It is insanity.

As Catholics, we are called to humanize the societies and Nations in which we live; to encourage others to live under the full light and love of God's plan of salvation as fully human persons in solidarity. We want the world to be a better place. It does not get better by making it easier to kill innocent children with chemical weapons directed at the sanctuary of the womb.

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F. K. Bartels is a contributing writer for Catholic Online. He is also managing editor of catholicpathways.com

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