COMMENTARY: Let’s call `emergency contraception’ what it really is

(RNS) I do not want my taxes to pay for abortions. It is as simple as that. Nor, for that matter, do I want the military to pay for them on my behalf. While Congressional abortion-rights forces played a shell game with the House and Senate health care bills — trumping anti-abortion restrictions in one […]

(RNS) I do not want my taxes to pay for abortions. It is as simple as that. Nor, for that matter, do I want the military to pay for them on my behalf.

While Congressional abortion-rights forces played a shell game with the House and Senate health care bills — trumping anti-abortion restrictions in one with abortion allowances in the other — the Department of Defense ordered all U.S. military hospitals to provide the “morning-after pill.”

According to CNN, the drug was already in many military hospitals. Now it will be available in every military clinic around the world. It may sound less toxic than the image many people have of “abortion,” but let’s be honest: they’re one in the same.


The “morning-after-pill,” a drug named Levonorgestrel, is known commercially as Plan-B or Next Choice. It’s sold over-the-counter as an “emergency contraceptive.” It’s really an abortifacient, a drug or agent that is used to cause an abortion.

Here’s how Levonorgestrel works:

When used as a birth control drug, low-doses of Levonorgestrel suppress ovulation. But when used as a morning-after pill in sky-high doses, Levonorgestrel makes the womb inhospitable to an already fertilized egg — what we’d otherwise call an embryo, about 100 cells dividing like mad and looking for a temporary home in the womb, to grow to a full-term baby.

Levonorgestrel short-circuits the process by keeping that embryo from attaching itself. Without a womb to attach to, a living embryo dies. Let’s call it what it is: abortion.

Not abortion? There are no two ways about it. I’m no scientist, but embryos are embryos. The propaganda surrounding the drug says it has two possible effects: 1) suppression of ovulation (keeping an egg from being available for fertilization in the first place) and 2) expulsion of a fertilized egg (embryo) before implantation.

In the first case, ovulation is only suppressed if the drug is taken well before it is “needed.” But “emergency” contraception is a misnomer. There is contraception (drugs, barrier methods) and there is abortion.

The sticky wicket is whether you really understand abortifacient methods of “birth control.” Morning-after pills and IUDs each make the womb inhospitable to the already fertilized egg.


The manufacturers know that. If you print the online coupon for Plan B One-Step, the fine print says the coupon is not valid for prescriptions or reimbursement from “Medicaid, Medicare or similar federal or state programs.” That’s because government agencies know that it’s an abortifacient.

So why is the U.S. taxpayer — even without the abortion-funding provisions of the Senate’s health care bill — paying for abortifacient drugs at U.S. military hospitals and clinics around the world?

One answer might be a change in military culture, one that echoes the philosophy of Army Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo, III, who said a few months ago that deployed soldiers and civilians in his command who became pregnant — and their partners — would be reprimanded and prosecuted. He included married couples in his order. The problem: a pregnant soldier must be immediately removed from combat.

The general rescinded his order amidst an avalanche of criticism, including letters from four women senators who support abortion rights, but he has already made it clear that pregnancy is a career-ender. That puts huge pressure on military couples (married or otherwise) who discover they are prospective parents. That pressure travels up the medical military chain to a panel that decides the federal government should give out even more Levonorgestrel.

I think we need to step back and consider what we are doing, both with the new Pentagon policy and with the abortion provisions of the health care bills.

There is something terribly wrong about a society that takes innocent human life — at any stage. The idea that the Pentagon, on both the medical and the military sides, is ending early pregnancies so women can keep on shooting is simply beyond the pale.


(Phyllis Zagano is visiting professor of theology and religion at St. Leo University in Florida and author of several books in Catholic studies. She also holds a research appointment at Hofstra University in New York.)

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