News

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

ECUADOR, January 22, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An article in Global Health magazine by Planned Parenthood vice president of international programs, Veena Siddharth, states that the world's biggest abortion promoter is now training children as young as 11 to inject their fellows with the abortifacient injectable birth-control drug Depo-Provera.

In the article, Siddharth introduces “Juan” as a participant in the training program.

“What if I told you that Juan, a community health worker in rural Ecuador, is providing injectable contraceptives outside the clinic setting to indigenous community members?

“What if I told you that Juan is actually 15-years-old and the clients he's reaching are also youth?

“Juan and 30 other young people, aged 11-19, are the first group of peer promoters to use a peer-to-peer community based model to deliver injectables and other contraceptives to rural and indigenous youth in the Chimborazo region of central Ecuador. The program is born of a partnership between Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and CEMOPLAF, a major Ecuadorian reproductive health NGO.”

The article indicates that these children receive a “four-part extensive training, including an introduction to injections in general; training on Depo Provera in particular.”

Jim Sedlak, vice president of the American Life League, commented on the introduction of this peer-to-peer program in Ecuador.

“It’s absolutely outrageous and, of course, this would be totally illegal here in the United States,” Sedlak said in a CNSNews report, adding that the medical aspect is not the only reason the program is objectionable.

“It is an assault on parental authority,” Sedlak said. “Certainly, Planned Parenthood has used these peer-to-peer programs frequently all over the United States, but they’ve carried it to a horrible extreme in Ecuador where they have 15-year-old kids going out and giving birth control shots to other 13-, 14-, 15-year-old kids.”

Planned Parenthood's use of children with only minimal training to administer this program, which would violate FDA regulations if attempted in the US, raises the questions not only of the safety of giving youngsters syringes containing a dangerous drug in order to inject other children, but of the effect of the drug on the young girls to which it is given.

The Global Health article states that all those that participate in the program are “younger than 20 years old.”

Depo-Provera has been shown have to have negative effects upon those who take it, and especially upon young women, including massive and partially irreversible bone loss.

The Depo-Provera user warning on the website of the drug company Pfizer which manufactures the hormonal contraceptive states:

“Use of Depo-Provera CI is associated with significant loss of BMD (bone mineral density). This loss of BMD is of particular concern during adolescence and early adulthood, a critical period of bone accretion. Bone loss is greater with increasing duration of use and may not be completely reversible.”

In 2005, a group of women launched a $700-million class-action lawsuit against Pfizer, saying the hormonal abortifacient drug had caused them massive bone density loss. Three lawsuits were launched Canada against the company alleging bone density loss.

The drug has also been linked to increased susceptibility to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in users, as much as three times higher than normal, according to one study.

Another study at McMaster University found that use of Depo-Provera caused 100 times greater susceptibility to infection with herpes simplex virus type 2 and to a significantly weaker immune response when exposed to the virus.

Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, called the program “dangerous.”
 
“We know Ecuador has a left-wing government,” Mosher told CNSNews, “but to allow this kind of program to go forward, I mean, just think of the emotional and the medical consequences of allowing teenagers – you can’t even get teenagers to make up their bed – and you are going to allow them to go out and inject their peers with a powerful, steroid-based drug without a medical examination, without awareness of any counter indication of taking the drug?
 
“This is a dangerous prescription for young people in Ecuador,” Mosher said.

Read related LSN articles:

Class Action Suit Says Depo-Provera Birth Control Drug Causes Osteoporosis
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/dec/05122101.html

Oral Contraceptives Decrease Bone Density
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/aug/07082705.html

Depo-Provera Leads to 100 Times Greater Herpes Susceptibility
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2003/apr/03042505.html

Deaths, Sickness Result From Abuse, Misuse of USAID, Ipas Family Planning Programs
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/nov/07111307.html