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TOKYO, Mon Mar 7, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – At same same time as Japan is suffering rapid dmeographic collapse, the country’s Ministry of Health has approved the sale of the NorLevo brand of the abortifacient “emergency contraceptive.”

A press release from the drug’s manufacturer in Japan, the Sosei Co., Ltd., said the biopharmaceutical company was granted approval for its emergency contraceptive pill by the Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare on February 23, making it the first ‘morning after’ pill available in Japan.

Sosei acquired the exclusive distribution rights to the product in Japan and Australia from Laboratoire HRA Pharma in April 2001. NorLevo was first launched in Europe in 1999 and is currently approved for use in some 50 countries.

The pills will be marketed in Japan by ASKA Pharmaceutical, which is expected to launch the product in the middle of May 2011.

The pill’s developer and manufacturer, European pharmaceutical company HRA Pharma, states on its website that the active ingredient in the pill, levonorgestrel, works by means of “several mechanisms … 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.”

The phrase “the modification of the uterine lining” indicates that, as with other “emergency contraceptive” drugs, 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.

The Japanese distributor states that the NorLevo pill is to be “taken within 72 hours after unprotected sexual intercourse or contraceptive failure to prevent unwanted pregnancy.” While HRA Pharma claims that the drug is 95% effective if taken within 24 hours, this drops to 85% within 48 hours, and 58% if taken within 72 hours.

HRA Pharma notes on its website that the known side effects include “nausea and vomiting, dizziness, fatigue, headache, lower abdominal pain, breast tenderness, and vaginal bleeding.”

Numerous studies have linked contraceptive drugs to greater health risks for users. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine states that women using pills containing levonorgestrel were 2.4 times more likely to have a heart attack as non-users.

In 2010 Japan recorded 1.07 million births and 1.19 million deaths — the highest number of deaths since 1947 when the post-war health ministry began keeping records — resulting in a net loss of population.

With Japan’s well-below-replacement-level birth rate, and an ever-increasing number of deaths, the country’s population figures showed a decline of 123,000 in 2010, the fourth consecutive year of demographic collapse.

In November 2010, The Economist magazine noted, “Japan is heading into a demographic vortex. It is the fastest-aging society on Earth and the first big country in history to have started shrinking rapidly from natural causes.”

The causes that the Economist calls “natural” include artificial contraception and abortion, as well as a tendency to later marriage or for the country’s young people to remain single.