The FDA is studying a new morning-after pill, commonly known as Ella, for approval in the United States. Ella is short for EllaOne, the brand name of the pill in Europe. It is effective for preventing pregnancy up to 120 hours following unprotected sex and was approved for use in 44 countries in early 2009. Though it is still a new drug and needs further study, I am hoping for rapid approval for prescription use. Why? Because the number one predictor of a woman's status worldwide is whether or not she has dominion over her fertility.
EllaOne is comprised of ulipristal acetate, an antiprogesterone drug that prevents pregnancy by delaying ovulation. Though ulipristal acetate has similarities in chemical action to mifepristone -- also known as RU 486 -- it is not intended for use as contraception or as a method of terminating an ongoing pregnancy. Clinical trials of both Plan B and Ella, published recently in the Lancet, showed that Ella prevented twice as many unwanted pregnancies as Plan B.
Despite advances in birth control since The Pill came on the scene in the 1960's, the fact is that 50 percent of pregnancies are still unplanned. And contraceptive failures happen even in ideal users. That means that there will always be a role for the morning-after pill. Ella does this job particularly well.
Politics, Religion, and Hypocrisy
Of course there will be the usual political jockeying before the FDA does the right thing (which is to approve this drug). Frankly, I wish the government, the church and everyone else who would oppose the morning-after pill would simply back off and leave medical and pregnancy decisions to the only person who can really make the right decision: the woman herself, in partnership with her healthcare provider.
Let me give you an insider's view of all this. Back in the mid-1970's, when I was an OB/GYN resident in Boston, I worked at a Catholic hospital. We were not allowed to discuss contraception with our patients, nor do tubal ligations or anything of that nature. So we hid the diaphragms in the depths of our exam tables so the nuns wouldn't find them. And we routinely wrote stealth prescriptions for birth control pills to "regulate periods." Yeah, right. And every week I'd get phone calls from men who were bigwigs in the community, asking me if I could arrange an abortion for a daughter or other woman close to them. I remember one guy saying to me, "I don't believe in abortion myself, but this would ruin my daughter's life." I quickly caught on to the hypocrisy of those individuals who maintained a split between their public stance and their private behavior. Publicly they imposed the moral codes popular at the time as a way to limit the choices of others, but privately they used their power and influence to bend the rules when their own personal lives were impacted.
Believe me, a lot of personal lives are impacted by fertility decisions. In the new edition of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (Bantam 2010), I wrote, "According to Trudy M. Johnson, a licensed marriage and family therapist with 20 years of experience counseling women who are grieving what she called voluntary pregnancy (VPT) terminations, 43 percent of women under the age of 55 have had voluntary pregnancy terminations. Thirty-eight percent of these are church members. That's 55,000,000 women. (To learn more about Johnson's work helping women grieve and process the emotional aspects of VPTs, go to www.missingpieces.org.)
"The bond between mother and child is the most intimate bond in human experience. In this most primary of human relationships, love, welcome and receptivity should be present in abundance. Forcing a woman to bear and raise a child against her will is therefore an act of violence. It constricts and degrades the mother-child bond and sows the seeds of hatred rather than love. Can there be any worse entry into the universe than forcing a child to inhabit a body that is hostile to it? Life is too valuable to inhibit its full blossoming and potential by forcing a woman to bear it against her will. Since we know that the early lives of criminals and societal offenders are often filled with poverty and despair, it may even be dangerous to bring a being into the world who isn't wanted. (In their best-selling book Freakonomics [William Morrow, 2005], authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner hypothesize that the reduction in crime over the past few decades can be traced to the legalization of abortion!)." It's also true that human nature is resilient. And it's entirely possible for individuals to heal from this kind of beginning. But this should be an individual decision.
A Global Turning Point
When it comes to having babies, a woman's ability to say when and how many (children) is one of the most significant factors that explains the greatly expanded role of women in business, education, and self-development in the last 50 years. The best predictor of a nation's health and economic strength is the status of its women.
We have collectively reached a turning point in our understanding of the global impact of a woman's state of health. It is estimated that in the 1840s half of all pregnancies eneded in abortion. Currently, as women's power is rising (like it was in the 1840s), so is anti-choice rhetoric. Though no culture at any time in history has been a stranger to fertility control, the research of historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg documents that reproductive freedom becomes a political issue only when there are "significant alterations in the balance of power between women and men, and of male heads of household over their traditional dependents." At just such a time, these changes are reflected in laws concerning women's right to manage their own fertility.
Currently the status of women is the number one issue on the planet. And women are, in the words of Sonia Johnson, "rising like yeast all over the planet." It's time for all of us to assume dominion over our bodies, without fear of repercussions. As Pulitzer Prize winning journalists Nickolas Kristoff and Sheryl Wudunn have so beautifully documented in their book Half the Sky, the education and economic development of women is the key to ending global poverty and terrorism. And a woman's education level is directly linked to her ability to assume dominion over her fertility. The approval of Ella here in the United States is a step in the right direction for women everywhere.
To learn more about Dr. Northrup and Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, go to www.drnorthrup.com.
Excerpted with permission from the fourth edition of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom.
Copyright Christiane Northrup, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
This information is not intended to treat, diagnose, cure, or prevent any disease. All material in this article is provided for educational purposes only. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you have regarding a medical condition, and before undertaking any diet, exercise, or other health program.
References:
[1] Glasier, A., M.D., 2010. Ulipristal acetate versus levonorgestrel for emergency contraception: a randomised non inferiority trial and meta-analysis, Lancet, Vol 375: 9714, pp: 555-562, 13 Feb.
[2]Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, "The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women's Career and Marriage Decisions," Journal of Political Economy, vol. 110, no. 4 (August 2002), pp. 730-70; available online at www.jstor.org/pss/3078534.
[3] Smith-Rosenberg, C., Disorderly Conduct, Oxford University Press, 1998, page 218.
[4] Smith-Rosenberg, C., Disorderly Conduct, Oxford University Press, 1998, page 218.
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It is indeed wonderful, at least in this country. What is not so wonderful are the millions of couples who know what birth control is and how to use it, but occasionally choose to take a risk and not use it, knowing they have abortion as a backup plan. That mentallity increases, rather than decreases abortion.
That was mistake. I apologize and I am grateful to you for spending your precious time educating me about this person. Her tale is clearly a strange and complicated one.
I will reiterate my original point that there are enormous profits in the abortion industry. And in many big cities, there is fierce competition for customers.
This is not an argument about abortion rights, which I happen to support (though I refuse to call myself "pro-choice"). But it does provide another example of abortion rights advocates refusing to recognize facts in their zeal to defend our position. Pointing out that there is big money to be made in abortion is a reality. Abortion rights advocates should not continue to deny this just because it is an unpleasant reality.
arms manufacturers who then sell their (our) weapons to third world
countries so that they can fight each other.
Forget the pittance earned by
those who believe women should be able to choose if -- and when --
they want to carry a child to term.
* Exactly what is 'the abortion industry'? And could you provide some credible citations on your definition?
* Neither agreeing nor disagreeing but...If, what you say is true, about the big money in abortion, so what? What is your real gripe here? Are you saying that abortion services should not be charged and no doctors should be making money offering a legal medical service to their patients or are you promoting the federal funding for abortion services to reduce the cost and profitability and in turn ensuring more access to needed services to women of lesser means?
I mean, you claim to be for choice, for a woman's right to abortion yet, your words seem to point to a man who 1) doesn't really understand what choice means or 2) someone who is acting as a ringer. In either case, it would seem that one needs more education on the subject they purport to know.
"I always thought (pro-chioce) meant that a woman should have control over her reproductive destiny unencumbered by external dogma that fails to account for reality or the rights of the individual.
In short, it's about a narrow aspect of self-determination related to a woman and her womb, not broad support for rampant self-destruction."
I was saying that your particular nuance and qualifying that right is almost COMPLETELY lacking in any of the rhetoric of the major abortion rights organizations in this country. Instead, we get short slogans that help win supporters and donations, but when intelligent people consider them, mean next to nothing.
Such oversimplification is ultimately an OBSTACLE to preserving abortion rights and reducing abortion, something we both support.
Here is the relevant Planned Parenthood web page: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/key-issues/protecting-abortion-access-25933.htm. It appears to be completely free of the "short slogans to help win supporters and donations".
Us "intelligent people" who support abortion rights demand more than straw man arguments such as yours.
In the meantime, take a look at ANY list of comments here posted in response to abortion articles. The phrase "anti-choicer" seems the most prominent. Suggestions about the sexism of anti-choicers is up there. Some version of calling the anti-choicers "theocrats" is another popular one. As is saying the anti-choicers lack compassion, want women barefoot and pregnant, etc.
Qualified remarks like the one from Hegemony are a rare find.
You wrote, "Overall, the abortion discussion has moved to "safe, legal and rare" along with "it's a tragedy."
The phrase 'safe, legal, and rare" was part of the 1992 Democratic platform for multiple national elections. It was removed at some point, I believe before the 2008 election. Part of the reasoning offered was that to say abortion should be "rare" could create guilt in a woman who had an abortion.
When we dance around the issue this way, worried that a woman who chose to NOT to insist her partner wear a condom might feel a bit bad because we said abortion should be "rare," we are HURTING, not helping, the cause of abortion rights in this country.
So really, we are moving away from that saner rhetoric you suggest. We are just shouting "Get your laws off my body!" over and over again when we DON'T apply it to other issues regarding self-determination and we AREN'T willing to discuss the issue in any other terms.
In any event, I appreciate you taking time to read my comments and to craft a logical and serious reply.
Normally I'd salute such trolling, I mean a man's name AND an anti-choice stance, replete with hyperbolic pseudo-wit--that's just classic. But I really feel you're phoning this in. You need to try harder. Please. Try. I have a feeling that through your amazing powers of internet insight you might just open that portal to the nineteenth century you pine for so dearly.
But perhaps this crazy assumption of yours encapsulates my issue: making wholly INACCURATE and FALSE assumptions while mouthing bumper sticker slogans that you claim as a principle, but not actually adhering to that principle when it comes to other issues.
This is why, despite my supported for legal abortion, I would NEVER use "pro-choice" to describe myself. This is because I KNOW I don't support a woman's right to do what she wants with her own body in regards to physician-assisted suicide. I KNOW I don't support a woman's right to do what she wants her own body in regards to smoking crack. Just because lying about that makes for more support in regards to people and fundraising, I simply will not LIE about that.
Were I to call myself pro-choice, I would be EVERY BIT the HYPOCRITE as the anti-choicers who call themselves pro-lifers who support war, capital punishment, a dismantling of the social net, etc. Unlike you, I don't claim lofty principles willy-nilly unless I actually SUBSCRIBE TO those principles.
You can CLAIM I pine for the 19th century, but you would be wrong.
You can CLAIM I do not support abortion rights, but you would be wrong.
You can CLAIM I possess only "pseudo wit," but you would be...well, you actually may be right about that one.
Thanks for taking time to respond.
My two sons knew nothing but nurturing while I carried them and I was in a state of total bliss. My Catholic mother, after the birth of my first son, said "now you have to be against birth control and abortion". Nothing could have been further from the truth. Carrying two precious lives to their wanted fruition made me aware of how difficult it would have been if I hadn't wanted to be pregnant. My second son was unplanned (fertility spec. said I couldn't have more children) so there was about a half hour of shock but I was happily married with a 5 yr. old who had brought nothing but joy to our lives so once the shock passed, we were thrilled.
I've volunteered as an escort at a nearby clinic when picketers are out in force. I donate to planned parenthood monthly and I look forward to seeing EllaOne available in pharmacies but I won't hold my breath because we seem to be moving closer to a time when being able to terminate pregnancies require a lot of money and travel. We have lost a number of clinics and doctors who perform abortions due to pressure and threats from anti-choice groups.
Meanwhile, the profits of the abortion industry (adjusted for inflation) have remained steady for the last 30 years.
Have you talked to the volunteers or the doctors and nurses who are literally putting their lives on the line to work there?
I've volunteered at several over the years and each one had no concern for profit. No other doctor or nurse takes such a risk just to go to work and they all could make much more money, much more easily just by working in a hospital so your rhetoric about profits just show that you have very little understanding or the realities of clinics. Hopefully, that will remain to be true but I've found that many of the girls I've escorted are there with their "We don't believe in abortion" parents.
And I may be a Christian, but I'm no Taliban. Don't compare me to dictators, please. Not just because I hate abortion and I'm a Christian.
And when the mother ends the child's life in the womb? What does that do to the mother-child bond?
Don't want a kid? Don't get pregnant. A condom breaking doesn't give anyone the right to kill.