Morning-after pill

Postinor-2 (Levonorgestrel) is a morning-after pill to be marketed in Australia by drug company Schering. It is expected to be launched in Australia in July.(1)

Postinor-2 is the first commercially prepared dedicated morning-after pill to be marketed in Australia. Until this time, morning-after pills have been prepared by family planning associations and by individual doctors using large numbers of contraceptive pills to make up the high progestogen dose.(2)

What's wrong with morning-after pills?

Morning-after pills like Postinor-2 can cause an early abortion by preventing the embryo from implanting in the uterus. This means that the drug has an abortifacient effect.

The Macquarie Dictionary defines abortion as, among other things, "the arrested development of an embryo or an organ at its (more or less) early stage".(3)

There are more than 80,000 surgical abortions performed in Australia every year. Allowing wider access to chemical abortion will do nothing to address the real problems that women face which may lead them to consider using a morning-after pill or surgical abortion, including: ongoing discrimination against pregnancy in the workplace, the continuing difficulty for young women of balancing education with motherhood and being trapped in an abusive relationship.

Misleading language threatening informed consent

Postinor-2 is being promoted as an "emergency contraceptive" drug - implying that it prevents conception, ie. the union of sperm and ovum, creating a new human life, rather than induces an abortion. This is misleading to women who will be offered the drug. They will be denied facts about the way the drug works. They will not have the opportunity for counselling. There will be no abortion-related informed consent process.(4)

Advocates promoting the morning-after pill try to minimize the implications of the abortifacient effect of the drug, describing the embryo as a "fertilized ovum".

Women using the morning-after pill will not know whether the pill has prevented a child from being conceived or whether it has caused an abortion.

How it works

The morning after pill consists of hormones which must be taken in two doses. The first dose should be taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse and the second dose should be taken 12 hours after the first one.(5)

Postinor-2 contains 0.75mg of levonorgestrel.(6) Levonorgestrel is a synthetic hormone derived from progesterone which is often used in smaller doses in contraceptive pills.(7)

Morning-after pills operate in a number of ways. They can prevent or delay ovulation and thereby conception is avoided. Conception is the union of sperm and ovum, forming a new human being. However, if conception is not avoided, the morning-after pill can induce an abortion by preventing the implantation of the embryo by affecting the lining of the uterus.(8)

The manufacturer of Postinor-2, the drug company Schering, acknowledges that the morning-after pill "… prevents the implantation of a fertilized ovum in the lining of the uterus".(9)

Side effects

Schering says that "irregular bleeding, breast tenderness and nausea are the most common side-effects" of the morning-after pill.(10) The Australian arm of Schering is now reported to be claiming that Postinor-2 is 'nausea-free'.(11)

Schering also states that the morning after pill is not suitable for regular use.(12)

The World Health Organisation has warned that:

"… repeated use of emergency contraceptive pills in any month can expose women to higher doses of steroids than those recommended during one cycle";
"… there may be a higher percentage of ectopic pregnancies among emergency contraceptive pill failure cases than among a normal pregnant population"; and,
morning-after pills "… are not recommended for routine use, because of the higher possibility of failure compared to regular contraceptives and the increased risk of side effects". (13)

Abortion-inducing

Under Australian law, any substance which prohibits the development of the conceptus is an abortifacient.(14) It is not necessary for the embryo or conceptus to implant in the uterus, establishing the pregnancy, before an abortion can be induced.

Those promoting the morning-after pill often argue that preventing the implantation of the embryo is not an abortion. They state that an abortion only occurs if it disrupts an established pregnancy and that pregnancy does not occur until the embryo implants in the uterine wall. The objection of pro-life people to abortion is not that it ends a pregnancy - all pregnancies end one way or another, preferably in birth. The objection is that an abortion ends a human life - the embryo that may be aborted by the morning-after pill....

To gain access to the full article on which the information in this press release is based, please visit: The Australian Federation of Right to Life Associations, Media Release http://www.righttolife.asn.au/media_releases/2002_june05b.htm