On August 24, 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced its approval to make available without a prescription Barr Pharmaceutical's "Plan B" for women 18 years and older. Younger women, under the age of 18, will require a prescription. Plan B is also known as the "Morning After Pill," and is advertised as "emergency contraception," to be used to avoid the conception of a child after sexual intercourse.
The Morning After Pill is an extremely high and very potent dose of the artificial hormone Levonorgestrel, which is designed to prevent ovulation and fertilization. However, this pill can also cause a fertilized egg"a human embryo — from implanting in the uterine wall. The forced interruption of the implantation of the embryo will result in the killing of the embryo — the aborting of human life at its earliest phase. Thus, the Morning After Pill is not so much a contraceptive as it is an abortifacient. Because of its marketing as an "emergency contraceptive," many will not understand the actual abortifacient purpose of Plan B, as well as its disastrous moral and physical side effects.
In a previous statement, I expressed my profound disagreement with the FDA's decision, which seems to disregard the severe moral implications of such easy access to a very dangerous and harmful drug. I especially note that many women will be deceived by the marketing of the drug, and will believe that it is solely contraceptive in nature. In reality, this drug will destroy innocent human life, as well as intensify the risk for a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy. The invention and sale of such a drug demonstrate a callous disregard for the gift of life. Furthermore, to make available over-the-counter such a potentially harmful drug demonstrates an unthinkable irresponsibility on the part of the FDA.
Conjugal Love, Consequential Responsibility
Sexuality, as created by God, is intended as the total gift of self between man and woman. That intimacy is understood as the act which ratifies the consent between man and woman and which solidifies their bond of covenantal love expressed in marriage. The Church holds in highest esteem the act of sexual intimacy of husband and wife, as well as the awesome possibility of the conception of a new life through their conjugal love.
Pope Paul VI, in his landmark encyclical, Humanae Vitae, stated: "…the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life — and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called" (no. 12).
This statement of Pope Paul VI emphasized for the modern world, at that time so grossly immersed in the notion of casual sex, that sexual love has attached to it the great responsibility of parenthood. The prophetic encyclical of Pope Paul VI continues to speak to an era in which sexual love and its consequential responsibility have been separated. The Morning After Pill, with its intent to quickly eliminate the consequences of sexual intimacy — a newly-conceived human being — reflects the attitude of an irresponsible culture. The elimination of a child through abortion, made easier through an over-the-counter drug, has demonstrated the depths to which our culture has fallen. Casual culture has resulted in human casualties: an estimated 40,000,000 unborn children whose lives have been terminated through abortion.
Pope John Paul II consistently reiterated the message of Humanae Vitae. In his own encyclical on human life, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), our late beloved Holy Father emphasized: "The deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always morally evil and can never be licit either as an end in itself or as a means to a good end" (no. 57). The Pontiff further noted: "Especially in the case of abortion there is a widespread use of ambiguous terminology, such as 'interruption of pregnancy,' which tends to hide abortion's true nature and to attenuate its seriousness in public opinion. Perhaps this linguistic phenomenon is itself a symptom of uneasiness of conscience. But no word has the power to change the reality of things: procured abortion is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth" (no. 58). Furthermore, highly pertinent now in the case of the Plan B pill, Pope John Paul II added: "Some people try to justify abortion by claiming that the result of conception, at least up to a certain number of days, cannot yet be considered a personal human life. But in fact, 'from the time that the ovum is fertilized, a life is begun which is neither that of the father nor the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth. It would never be human if it were not human already.'" (no. 60).
