HARTFORD, Connecticut (LifeSiteNews) — Abortifacient contraception will soon be available in vending machines in Connecticut, Democrat Gov. Ned Lamont announced as part of a push to expand birth control “access.”
The first of these vending machines will be installed at the University of Connecticut’s main campus in Storrs, according to a press release from the governor’s office, two years after the state legalized the sale of Plan B and other over-the-counter pills via vending machines, making them accessible without interaction with a medical professional. “You may need Plan B, as we all know, in the middle of the night, and you won’t have access to a pharmacy until the morning,” liberal Republican state Rep. Nicole Klarides-Ditria said at the time to justify the move.
Lamont also announced a new optional four-hour training program for pharmacists to directly prescribe contraception without a customer’s doctor.
“This is just one of the many ways we’re working to expand access to contraception and other important medications in Connecticut,” Lamont said. “Pharmacists have continued to play a growing role in our healthcare system, from administering vaccines to dispensing Narcan and other lifesaving medications, and now prescribing birth control. They are a critical part of the healthcare network.”
“There can be many barriers to going to a primary care provider for contraception – potential costs, needing to take time off work, or traveling long distances. That is why both patients and pharmacists overwhelmingly offered their support for this change,” Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz added. “Everyone should have safe and reliable access to contraceptives. Governor Lamont and I remain committed to ensuring that our state continues to be the best place for women and that every patient in Connecticut has access to the care they need.”
Progestin-based contraceptives like Plan B are commonly promoted as alternatives to abortion because they supposedly prevent pregnancy rather than end it. In January 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) amended Plan B’s label to “clarify” that it was not an abortifacient. But such drugs do in fact have abortifacient potential, and whether they prevent conception or implantation depends on when they are taken relative to a woman’s cycle.
“If Plan B is taken five to two days before egg release is due to happen, the interference with the LH signal prevents a woman from releasing an egg, no fertilization happens, and no embryo is formed,” Dr. Donna Harrison of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists explained, citing numerous studies. However, if the pill is taken during the “two-day window in which embryos can form but positive pregnancy tests don’t occur,” studies indicate it “has a likely embryocidal effect in stopping pregnancy.”
Connecticut is far from the first place where abortifacients can be found in college vending machines, as easy access to abortion pills is one of the abortion lobby’s most potent tools for perpetuating abortion-on-demand post-Roe v. Wade that they are aggressively pursuing regardless of the risks to the women they are supposedly serving.
A 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the “abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA, and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.”
Pro-lifers warn that when the Biden administration completely eliminated requirements that abortion pills be taken in the presence of a medical professional, meaning without any medical supervision or medical support close by, it made those events certain to increase.
“A November 2021 study by Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” Catholic University of America research associate Michael New wrote. “They analyzed state Medicaid data of over 400,000 abortions from 17 states that fund elective abortions through their Medicaid programs. They found that the rate of abortion-pill-related emergency-room visits increased over 500 percent from 2002 through 2015. The rate of emergency-room visits for surgical abortions also increased during the same time period, but by a much smaller margin.’”
In November 2022, Operation Rescue reported that a net decrease of 36 abortion facilities in 2022 led to the lowest number in almost 50 years, yet the chemical abortion business “surged” with 64 percent of new facilities built last year specializing in dispensing mifepristone and misoprostol. Citing data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, STAT says mifepristone “accounts for roughly half of all abortions in the U.S.”
Pro-life Americans are still waiting to see what exactly the new administration will do on the subject of abortion pills. President Donald Trump has already taken several steps against taxpayer funding of abortion but campaigned for reelection on not enforcing federal law prohibiting abortion pills from being dispensed by mail, continuing an unprecedented change first made by Biden, and has not yet said if that is still his position.