FIC Blog

The FDA’s decision allowing over-the-counter access to a potential abortifacient has led pro-abortion activists to renew their attacks on religious freedom in Connecticut:

In Connecticut, women’s advocates who have been lobbying for easier access to the drug for rape victims said they fear the ruling will do little to change the continued reluctance of Catholic hospitals and some others to supply the drug to those seeking help in emergency rooms.
The controversy over Plan B sparked strong feelings earlier this year at the state legislature. A bill that would have required every hospital in the state to dispense the morning-after pill to rape victims was killed after a long and loud debate…

The Catholic Church vehemently opposed the proposed requirement, arguing that in some cases emergency contraceptives can prevent implantation of a fertilized embryo, thus making them tantamount to abortion…

[Laura] Cordes said women’s advocates will return to the Capitol next session in another attempt at a law requiring hospitals to provide Plan B.

And the vitriol of local leftist bloggers toward defenders of religious freedom has begun again:

Who are the freaks that think a rape victim shouldn’t receive emergency contraception, and even an abortion if necessary?

But James Papillo, state Victim Advocate, testified that the “Plan B” bill was not about rape victims. From an AP story excerpted in a Mar. 7th post on this blog:

[Papillo] questioned any need for the bill and told the legislature’s Public Health Committee that he has never received a complaint from a rape victim who was denied the pill from a Catholic hospital. Papillo has held the job for more than six years…

“I see this for what it is. It is not a victims’ rights issue. It is not a victims’ services issue,” Papillo said. “Victims here are being used as a hook to further an agenda they are hiding … The issue is an attack on the Catholic institutions.”

As bad as the exploitation of crime victims described by Victim Advocate Papillo is the other Big Lie being disseminated by pro-abortion activists: that “Plan B” merely prevents pregnancy and cannot cause an abortion. As with same-sex “marriage,” anti-family activists have to re-define reality to reach their desired result. From the Family Research Council:

·   Violation of Informed Consent. If the fact that Plan B can act as an abortifacient by one of its three operating mechanisms (by inhibiting implantation of a fertilized egg in a women’s uterus) is not clearly communicated to women who use the drug, it is a direct abuse of informed consent. Any efforts to communicate to women that Plan B physiologically acts strictly to prevent pregnancy infringes upon individually-held beliefs that pregnancy/life begins at conception. The literacy study results listed below indicating the high percentage of women miscomprehending Plan B’s OTC label amplify concerns about possible violation of informed consent, particularly in low literacy-level women who believe life begins at conception. A clear example of this violation regarding human subjects has been in studies marketing Plan B as “emergency contraception” or “EC” to populations of low-income Hispanic women.

Ironically, the Planned Parenthood op-ed in today’s Courant is titled “Reason Trumps Ideology.” But denying informed consent to pro-life women who would otherwise not take Plan B is nothing if not the triumph of pro-abortion ideology over reason—and the exploitation of women in service to that ideology.