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News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
Eric Scheidler’s post earlier this week shone a spotlight on Planned Parenthood’s failure to reduce unintended pregnancy in the U.S., despite receiving ever increasing taxpayer funding.
Following on his commentary, I thought it would be worth taking a closer look at another element of the seemingly endless “How can we reduce unintended pregnancy?” debate: namely, so-called emergency contraception (hereafter: EC).
Today I came across a press release dated September 2, 1998 from a company called Gynétics (which at the time was based in New Jersey, but is now based in Belgium). The release announced that the their product, Preven, had just become the “first FDA-approved product for emergency contraception that can prevent pregnancy when used within 72 hours” after sex.
The press release contained this comment from one Dr. Anita Nelson, an Ob/Gyn professor at UCLA:
It is estimated that nearly 50 percent of all abortions and unintended pregnancies in this country could be avoided if women had access to emergency contraception.
That’s no small prediction. And looking back, it’s turned out to be hopelessly wrong. [Continue reading ...]
A woman is carried into an ambulance behind a sheet at Planned Parenthood in Aurora, Illinois [Photo by Eric Scheidler, 4/1/11]
Reading yesterday’s Chicago Tribune article about the lack of oversight of abortion clinics in Illinois, a couple things in particular stuck out in my mind:
Also unknown to officials are the types of abortion-related problems experienced by women. Nearly 4,000 reports of abortion complications involving Illinois residents in 2009 were missing the required description.
That’s nearly 4,000 complications in one state, in one year.
Even worse, the article highlighted the deaths of six (6) women, and in at least four of these cases, the abortion facilities “could not confirm” whether they had reported these deaths to the state, as required by law.
Unbelievably — or not, I suppose — Planned Parenthood “said it had no reason to believe the 2002 death [of Maurice Stevenson's wife] was not reported but that the records were in storage” [emphasis added].
The records were in storage? Seriously? [Continue reading ...]
Recently on The Abortion Gang, a blogger named Kaitlyn asked, “Want to eliminate the need for abortion?”
Her answer was — you might want to sit down for this — making contraception more accessible. (Specifically, so-called emergency contraception.)
Kaitlyn’s rationale is that a recent Reuters article reports that there has been a 150% increase in the number of women who say they have used EC since 2002, due to the fact that it’s now available over-the-counter.
She then confidently draws conclusions about the results of this huge increase in the use of EC:
In other words, when you make contraception safe, accessible, and affordable, people will use it, thereby preventing the unintended pregnancies that often result in termination.
Oh?
Apparently Kaitlyn didn’t bother to read the rest of the Reuters article she linked to. If she had, she would have come across a candid admission from one Megan Kavanaugh of the Guttmacher Institute:
The hope, Kavanaugh noted, had been that emergency contraception would lower the national rate of unintended pregnancy. “But so far there’s no evidence that this is happening,” she said.
I’m guessing Kaitlyn must have missed the memo that based on all available evidence, the very most that can be said of EC is that it’s “more effective than nothing.”
Update April 4: My letter in response to Deena Sherman’s article (see below) has not been printed as yet, but this morning an excellent reply by my wife April was the lead letter in the Beacon News this morning!
Today a column appeared in my local paper, the Aurora Beacon News, opposing a bill in the Illinois House of Representatives that would hold abortion facilities to the same standards as similar medical facilities.
The piece by columnist Deena Sherman was filled with errors of both fact and logic, so of course I had to write a reply. I thought I’d share it as an example of the kind of strategy we pro-lifers should take when addressing misinformation from the other side.
First I’ll offer four key pointers on writing a letter to the editor in response to an column like this one, and then I’ll share my letter with you in its entirety. [Continue reading ...]
With the media coverage surrounding the birth control pill’s introduction 50 years ago this month, I’ve been re-listening to the CDs from the League’s Contraception Is Not the Answer conference.
One of the best talks given at the conference was a presentation entitled “Hormones ‘R’ Us”, in which Dr. Janet Smith discussed the negative impact of chemical contraceptives on women’s bodies, minds, and relationships.
Having just listened to Dr. Smith’s talk last week, I was interested to read a recent Salon column titled “Why I Hate the Pill” written by Glamour editor Geraldine Sealey.
Make no mistake, Sealey writes as someone who sees nothing wrong with non-marital sex and contraception — and yet her column confirms a great deal of what Smith, et al. have been saying for years about the problems posed by the pill (and other forms of hormonal birth control generally).