Ben Johnson contributed to this story.
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 21, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – New video footage proves that allowing the abortifacient Plan B One Step to be sold over-the-counter has freed statutory rapists to purchase the abortion-inducing drug to end the pregnancies of their underage victims.
This morning, Students for Life of America (SFLA) released the second in a series of undercover videos on the ready availability of so-called “emergency contraception.” Two actors, playing a 33-year-old male and a 15-year-old female, say they were having a sexual relationship that has ended in pregnancy.
In pharmacies in Ohio, Virginia, New York, and South Carolina, the man – who would be considered a statutory rapist under all relevant state laws – says he is purchasing Plan B One Step because he does not want the teen girl's parents to find out about the pregnancy.
In at least one pharmacy, the man said the minor did not want to have an abortion, but he was going to trick her into consuming the morning-after pill anyway.
Footage shows the purported rapist and a male pharmacy employee discussing ways to put the drug into her drink against her wishes.
Before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Plan B One Step to be sold over-the-counter to all women of child-bearing age, pro-life activists had expressed concern that statutory rapists would use it to cover up their crimes. Anna Higgins, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council, said, “There is a real danger that Plan B may be given to young girls, under coercion or without their consent. he involvement of parents and medical professionals act as a safeguard for these young girls.”
Such concerns were brushed off by liberal pundits and others as – in one case – “wild-eyed craziness.”
The new footage shows those warnings were prophetic.
FDA spokesperson Erica Jefferson defended the purchase of One Step by young girls, telling LifeSiteNews.com the practice “is based on the order of a federal court and data from clinical studies showing the product could be used safely and effectively as a nonprescription product by adolescent women.” She cited two studies by the pharmaceutical company Teva, one related to use and one to “label comprehension.”
But the abortion-inducing drug may be purchased by members of either sex without a prescription. Jefferson told LifeSiteNews that, while “FDA has the authority to limit the indication for use of a particular drug product to a specific gender, FDA does not limit who can purchase an [over-the-counter] product by gender.”
Jefferson added that LifeSiteNews.com “would need to contact a state board of pharmacy for their opinion” of whether the pharmacy employee would have the ability to refuse to sell the pill, because the federal agency approves drugs but “does not regulate the practice of medicine or the practice of [the] pharmacy.”
A pharmacist technician, who asked not to be named, told LifeSiteNews.com that pharmacists may refuse to sell medication if they believe they are to be used for illegal activity.
The SFLA video series was conducted throughout August and September at 30 Walgreens, Rite-Aid, and CVS stores across the country. The goal is to raise awareness for legislation supported by SFLA that would, according to a public statement by SFLA President Kristan Hawkins, “aim to control the sale of Plan B, as well as provide conscience protections to those employees who have moral objections.”
In the first SFLA video, actresses playing 15-year-old girls bought Sudafed and Plan B One Step. An identification proving age was required for Sudafed, a common cold medicine, but not the abortifacient. (Federal law requires an identification for Sudafed purchases because of the presence of pseudoephedrine, or PSE, in certain Sudafed products. This was mandated by the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2006, but states can have their own regulations that are stricter than the federal ones.)
More information about their campaign is available at ExposePlanB.com.
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Plan B was approved for use by women 17 and older without a prescription in 2009, but after a great deal of controversy and two court rulings the current policy was implemented on June 21, 2013.
The FDA originally tried to approve Plan B for all ages in 2011, but HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius – backed by President Obama – set the age at 15 instead. Judge Edward Korman overruled the administration in April 2013.
In a press announcement on June 21, the FDA’s Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research said, “Over-the-counter access to emergency contraceptive products has the potential to further decrease the rate of unintended pregnancies in the United States.”
The FDA’s statement is at odds with a great deal of scientific evidence. Christine Piette Durrance, Ph. D., said her study on the widespread use of the morning-after pill among teens in Washington State failed to find “an impact of pharmacy access on abortion or birth rates,” but “led to a statistically significant increase in STD rates (gonorrhea rates), both overall and for females.”
Leading contraception proponent Dr. James Trussell, a senior fellow at the Guttmacher Institute a board member of the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, co-wrote a report earlier this year saying that “women must know” that emergency contraceptives “may at times inhibit implantation of a fertilized egg in the endometrium.”
That is, instead of lowering the rate of unintended pregnancies, rates remained level, and the pill sometimes led to an early chemical abortion.