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Pro-Abortion Campaign Struck Down by Costa Rican Government

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica, October 31, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Costa Rican government has prohibited a pro-abortion campaign that urges women to use the abortifacient "morning after pill," according to the Catholic news agency ACI Prensa.

In response, pro-abortion forces within the Costa Rican government began an initiative to legalize the drug, according to local media reports.

ACI Prensa reports that the decision to strike down the campaign came in response to a motion filed by the Association for the Defense of Life (ADEVI) with the Costa Rican authorities, noting that the campaign contradicted the Costa Rican Constitution's defense of life.

The Costa Rican Constitution declares that "human life is inviolable" in its Article 21. The "morning after pill" can prevent the blastocyst, which is the second stage of human life, from attaching to the uterine wall, thus ensuring its death.

Costa Rica's National Committee for the Control of Propaganda agreed with ADEVI and ruled that the campaign, which was being financed by the "Costa Rican Demographic Association," was illegal and must be withdrawn.

The Costa Rican Demographic Association is affiliated with the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the world's major promoter of abortion.

Pro-abortion representatives in the Costa Rican Congress, as well as the nation's health minister Maria Luisa Avila, are fighting back by pushing legislation that would legalize the morning after pill.

"What the pill does is inhibit or retard the freeing of the ovulum and prevents fertilization," said Avila, who added that once the egg is fertilized the drug has no effect, and therefore is not abortificacient.

Although this claim is commonly repeated in Latin America, it is contradicted by studies that have indicated the opposite, most notably a study published in Fertility and Sterility in 2007.

A 1994 textbook on embryology states that, "After fertilization, the pre-implantation embryo remains extremely vulnerable. The 'morning after' pill, with its high estrogen content, alters the endometrium so that implantation fails to occur" (Human Embryology and Developmental Biology, by Bruce M. Carlson, M.D., Ph.D., 1994, p. 110.).

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