By John-Henry Westen
QUITO, May 29, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Last week the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court unanimously concurred with a lower court ruling prohibiting the sale of the morning after pill Postinor 2. TheÂsuit to have the pill banned was put forward by Fernando Rosero Rohde, the president of a local pro-life group in November 2004.
Rohde reacted to the ruling saying it was “an historic day for Ecuador.”
The case was hard won since powerful pharmaceuticals and foreign interest groups were pushing for the legalization of the drug.Â
In 2004 the Ecuadorian Ministry of Health ordered the removal of the abortifacient drugs from pharmacies on the grounds of a “prescribed fault” in its pricing. The decision came while pro-life leaders in the tiny South American country were working to have the pill banned completely.
The efforts of the pro-life movement to ban the drugs in the largely Catholic country received strong support from Church leaders and physicians. The physicians association of Ecuador and the Ecuadorian Catholic Bishops’ Conference joined efforts to have the pill banned completely because of its abortifacient effect. Luis Sanchez, President of the Medical Federation of Ecuador said in 2004, “The morning after pill cannot be classified as a contraceptive method because by its very nature it acts against something that has already been conceived.”
Planned Parenthood International worked to insinuate the contraceptive mentality into Ecuador through its affiliate, Asociación Pro-Bienestar de la Familia Ecuatoriana, which works primarily through 150 annual ‘sex education’ workshops for adolescents.