The Food and Drug Administration is one step closer to approving an 'emergency contraceptive' that life advocates say can cause an early abortion.
A federal advisory panel voted unanimously last week in favor of approving the drug Ulipristal – also called "ella" – for U.S. distribution. The FDA usually follows the panel's recommendations.
The debate is over how the drug operates. Unlike Plan B – the current "morning-after pill" on the market – ella contains a chemical similar to RU-486, the abortion pill.
Ella blocks progesterone – making the uterus hostile to the new human embryo if fertilization has taken place or starving the embryo if implantation has happened.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Galveston-Houston Archdiocese wrote a letter to the commissioner of the FDA, criticizing the marketing of the drug as merely a "contraceptive."
"FDA approval for that purpose would likely make the drug available for 'off-label' use simply as an abortion drug — including its use by unscrupulous men with the intent of causing an early abortion without a woman's knowledge or consent," he wrote. "Such abuses have already occurred in the case of RU-486, despite its warning labels and limited distribution."
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, said women who are already pregnant could buy the drug and unknowingly abort the preborn child their carrying.
"The FDA is being asked to make it easily available," she told Fox News. "Women will buy the drug thinking that it is a morning-after pill when, in fact, it is an abortion pill."
No word yet when the FDA will make its final decision on making the drug available.
Source: CitizenLink
Publish Date: June 21, 2010
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