Questionable Study Hails “Morning-After Pill”

[Jessie]

By Tanya L. Green

Claims it has reduced abortion rate

The number of abortions dropped by 51,000 in 2000 because the women who would have had abortions instead took the morning-after pill, which ended pregnancies—or so says the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), Planned Parenthood’s research arm.

The group claims the morning-after pill, or “emergency contraception,” accounted for the reduced number of pregnancies. Morning-after pills are essentially high doses of oral contraceptives that prevent ovulation, fertilization or implantation of a fertilized egg. Taking one within 72 hours after sexual intercourse (without contraception) may prohibit or end a pregnancy. It does not end a pregnancy where the fertilized egg is implanted.

But AGI makes this claim about the morning-after pill’s impact on reducing abortion while having no data on the number of women who actually took it in 2000. And the researchers admit it is “unknown … what proportion of pregnancies among method users were due to inconsistent or incorrect contraceptive use and what proportion were accounted for by method failure.”

Wendy Wright, Concerned Women for America’s senior policy director, questions the credibility of the report, calling it “a propaganda tool intended to legitimize and promote the morning-after pill.”

More here
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I have a co-worker who was told that RU486 was not abortion so she took it "the morning after" thinking it worked just as a contraceptive would. I believe differently because the pill is intended to destroy a healthy process that begins from conception. --Di