Abortion Advocates Still Want Age Restrictions Off Morning After Pill

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Aug 13, 2007   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Abortion Advocates Still Want Age Restrictions Off Morning After Pill Email this article
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 13,
2007

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Abortion advocates haven’t given up their quest to remove the age restrictions the Food and Drug Administration placed on the morning after pill. Because the maker of the Plan B drug couldn’t prove the pill is safe for teenagers, the FDA ruled that no one over the age of 18 can get it without a prescription.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York-based pro-abortion law firm, filed a lawsuit against the FDA last October in an attempt to force the agency to extend the sales to younger teenagers.

CRR, representing several pro-abortion women, filed a complaint against the federal agency in a federal court in Brooklyn.

"We have an alarmingly high rate of teenage pregnancies in this country — 750,000 each year, and that population also needs access to emergency contraception," Nancy Northup, the center’s president, told CBS News.

"Emergency contraception is contraception," said Northup. "It prevents pregnancy. And there’s no reason for pharmacists not to be providing contraceptives."

However, studies have shown that the morning after pill is much less effective than its backers claim.

Dr. Rafael T. Mikolajczyk of the School of Public Health at the University of Bielefeld in Germany and Dr. Joseph B. Stanford, who teaches public health at the University of Utah, wrote a May paper showing that the Plan B drug can cause an abortion in limited circumstances.

Combining data from multiple studies, they also found the Plan B pill was only 8%-49% effective depending on the amount of delay in using it after intercourse.

When used immediately, it was 49 percent effective in preventing conception but that dropped to 8 percent if the user of the drug waits until 72 hours after intercourse.

Abortion advocates have long claimed that the Plan B drug would reduce the number of abortions even though studies and actual data following its usage contradict those claims.