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New Canadian Emergency Contraceptive is Abortifacient, Contrary to Distributor’s Claims

By Patrick B. Craine and John Jalsevac

June 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – NorLevo, a new emergency contraceptive pill that the distributor falsely claims is not an abortifiacient, has recently been approved for use in Canada. The drug’s launch was announced on Wednesday by its manufacturer, HRA Pharma, a European pharmaceutical company. 

Bayer Inc. will market and distribute the drug locally. NorLevo will be available in Canadian pharmacies without a doctor’s prescription.

Bayer Inc. advises women to take the drug within 12 – 72 hours after intercourse. They claim that it is 95% effective within 24 hours, 85% within 48 hours, and 58% within 72 hours.

They state, further, “NorLevo® is not an abortive agent. If a woman is already pregnant, NorLevo® will not terminate the pregnancy.” 

However, NorLevo’s own website confirms that the drug is indeed an abortifacient. In answering how the drug works, the company explains: “Our current understanding is that several mechanisms could be involved such as impairment of ovulation, or modification of the uterine lining. In any case, emergency contraception takes effect before the implantation of the egg in the uterus.”

However, the phrase “the modification of the uterine lining” indicates that – as with other “emergency contraception” - one mechanism of the drug is to ensure that the womb is made hostile to a fertilized embryo, ensuring that the newly conceived human life will be unable to implant, and will therefore die.

Groups that promote the use of “emergency contraception” have responded to criticisms that such drugs causes early abortions by altering the definition of what constitutes a “pregnancy.”

As Prof. Richard Stith explained in a 2006 LSN column: “According to the new definitions, ‘conception’ and ‘pregnancy’ begin at implantation rather than at fertilization, and ‘abortion’ means the termination of a post-implantation ‘pregnancy.’ The drug makers can claim, rightly, that their statements are true under these new definitions.”

MAPs have been available in Canada over-the-counter since May 2008, when this status was given to ‘Plan B’. Canada was the fifth country to make this move.

Gwen Landolt of REAL Women Canada, in an interview with LSN, called the newly approved drug “medically questionable.” 

“Women are guinea pigs for this,” she said. “Throwing a whole … concentration of hormones at a woman for the purpose of destroying the child within her is not beneficial to her.

“And the implications are, of course, that women don’t have to worry about … becoming pregnant, because she can just hop over and get her morning after pill, even though it’s highly detrimental to her.”

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