FDA to Hear From Women’s Group Urging Opposition to Abortion Drug Ella
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 16, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The head of a women’s organization will be testifying at a Food and Drug Administration hearing on Thursday and telling federal officials the drug agency should not approve the abortion drug Ella. Known as ellaOne in Europe and by its name ulipristal, it operates like the popular abortion drug RU 486.
Despite its abortifacient properties, the Ella drug would be marketed in the United States as a new and improved version of the morning after pill.
If the FDA allows the drug to be sold over the counter, would be told that it would work like the Plan B morning after pill by merely preventing conception from occurring.
Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration declared Ella safe and effective for women and released documents saying ella, made by French drugmaker HRA Pharma, appears to work with no unexpected side effects.
While the morning after pill can cause an abortion if conception has taken place and a new human being created, the Ella drug will undoubtedly cause an abortion of an unborn baby when used because it works days after conception has taken place.
Ella blocks the hormone progesterone, interfering with the lining of the uterus so an embryo cannot implant or, if implanted, will not survive. That’s what Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America, will testify at the hearing.
Wright informs LifeNews.com she will tell FDA officials Ella operates in the same manner as the abortion drug RU-486 by blocking progesterone receptors. This interferes with the uterine lining, impacting embryos that have not yet implanted and those that have implanted, aborting a pregnancy.
"Women will take Ella thinking it’s a morning-after pill, when in fact, it is an abortion pill," she says.
Wright worries that if the Ella drug is easy to access, by the FDA selling it over the counter without a physician visit, women will be victims to it being slipped to them without their consent — perhaps by rapists and sexual abusers. This has already happened numerous times with other abortion-causing drugs and it would potentially increase the number of incidents.
"Drugs that can cause an abortion, while touted as giving women more control over their bodies, are just as easily used by men to exploit women," Wright says.
Wright also says anyone billing the new Ella abortion drug as a means of preventing abortions is misleading the public.
"Advocates for the morning-after pill claimed that it would dramatically reduce pregnancies and abortions. Now they admit that’s not true. They also admit that morning-after pills are not as effective as previous studies — which the FDA relied on — claimed," she said.
"The same advocates claim that RU-486 is safe, but the families of the women who died from that drug will beg to differ," she continued.
In fact, at least 13 women around the world — and potentially dozens more — have died from using the RU 486 (or mifepristone) abortion drug. Another 1,100 in the United States alone have been injured by it, with some women having such severe problems it required a hospital visit and complete blood transfusion.
Wright says Ella proponents excuse the selling of an ineffective drug to women who are not at risk of getting pregnant as a "woman’s right," but, in reality, what they cloak as a woman’s "entitlement" is a facade to promote their own ideological crusade.
She concludes: "The FDA should not unleash Ella on unsuspecting women — a drug promoted by activists with a history of overstating the efficacy of reproductive drugs while understating the overall risks to women."
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