CINCINNATI, OH, January 29, 2002 (LSN.ca) - The leading international peer-reviewed pharmacy journal has just released an article questioning the claims of morning-after pill advocates which suggest that the drugs “prevent pregnancy” rather than cause abortions. The report set to appear in the March issue of The Annals of Pharmacotherapy shows evidence that morning-after pill drug regimens may cause the death of a living embryo by blocking its attempts to attach inside the uterus.
“Postfertilization Effect of Hormonal Emergency Contraception,” by Chris Kahlenborn, MD, Joseph B. Stanford, MD, MSPH, and Walter L. Larimore, MD, notes that morning-after pill regimens use the same active ingredients found in birth control pills - hormones such as levonorgestrel and ethinyl estradiol. It has been widely assumed that these ingredients work mainly by preventing ovulation. However, this report describes evidence that the drugs may sometimes fail to prevent ovulation and rely instead on an after-fertilization effect, causing abortion of the newly formed embryonic life.
The article points out that regardless of the personal beliefs of the physician or providers about the mechanism of these drugs, it is important that patients have information relevant to their own beliefs and value systems. Therefore, for women to whom the induced death of an embryonic life is important, failure to discuss the possibility of this loss, even if the possibility is judged to be remote, would be a failure of informed consent.
Kahlenborn and colleagues conclude that based on the data reviewed, an after-fertilization, early-abortion effect of these drugs is probably a more common event than is recognized by most physicians or patients. The questions raised by this timely analysis could have an impact on current, controversial efforts to make morning-after pill regimens available over-the-counter nationwide. They also present serious moral and ethical challenges to the use of these drugs in emergency rooms and private medical practice.
See the whole study on line in pdf format at: http://phth.allenpress.com/images/Morning_afterpill.pdf