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Email: "Politicians, Faith & Family Groups and Health Professionals Condemn Over the Counter Abortifacient"

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BY LifeSiteNews.com WASHINGTON, December 16, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The FDA hearings on the abortifacient morning after pill were packed with presentations opposed to the proposed over-the-counter status for the drugs.  In a letter signed by 44 members of Congress last Monday, the FDA was urged not to approve the change in status for the drug.  “We urge you to reject the petition currently before you to make the morning-after pill as accessible to our nation’s teenage daughters as aspirin or hairspray,” said the letter.  Concerned Women for America’s Senior Policy Director Wendy Wright gave testimony before the FDA today.  “It is quite astonishing that the FDA is considering allowing Plan B or any other form of the morning-after pill (MAP) to be sold over-the-counter,” said Wright. “Approving over-the-counter access to a high dose of this drug, when a lower-dose cannot be obtained without a medical exam, physician oversight and prescription, exposes women, teen-agers and girls to complications such as blood clots and heart attacks.”  In a list of reasons for the FDA to protect women by advising against over-the-counter access to the morning-after pill, Wright included: “promoters’ refusal to provide women with adequate information to make clear that the MAP can end a pregnancy.”  American Life League president Judie Brown also testified at the FDA hearings.  “Plan-B is a dangerous drug regimen that takes the life of a newly conceived baby. Our federal government should never sanction abortion in any form, whether the means of death are chemical or surgical,” said Brown. “Frankly, so-called emergency contraception should have never been approved in the first place. In addition to its abortifacient potential, this multi-pill regimen also poses serious health risks to the mother who takes it.” The Family Research Council President Tony Perkins also commented against the abortifacient drugs saying, “Only an adherence to a pro-abortion ideology would explain any decision to make the morning-after pill as easy as baby aspirin for uninformed young girls to purchase. In the past, such as with the swift and politically-motivated approval of the abortion drug RU-486, the FDA has paid more attention to Planned Parenthood than to the real needs of American women and girls. We certainly hope they will now reverse course and keep the morning-after pill off the pharmacy counter.”  He concluded, “Easing access to the morning-after pill would have the same dire consequences in America that it is already having in European nations: exponential increases in sexual promiscuity, skyrocketing STD rates, and the endangerment of women’s health.”  American nurse Jill Stanek also testified before the FDA.  “As a registered nurse, I have seen for myself the devastation when young girls who have been sexually abused by older men,” Stanek told the Illinois Leader summarizing her presentation. “If these drugs are made available over the counter, criminal rapists and sexual abusers will be able to cover their crimes and continue their behavior.”  The Culture of Life Foundation reports that the United States Catholic Conference also wrote the FDA saying, “the FDA has no mandate to promote and facilitate ways of pregnancy that may cause the death of developing human life already conceived” and warning that the action “will reverse the legal and medical trend toward greater recognition and protection of human embryonic life, by making chemical agents that can destroy such life so easily obtainable.” http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/politicians-faith-family-groups-and-health-professionals-condemn-over-the-c/

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