Sunday, May 14, 2006

Imagine going to your doctor and being offered a pill—not because you were sick, or in any danger of becoming sick. No—your friendly physician is simply giving you drugs because you’re a woman.

If that sounds like a Hitchcock horror story to you—be prepared. Gynecologists around the country are embarking on a weird medical experiment that could have serious repercussions for women’s health.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has decided it won’t wait for the Food and Drug Administration to approve over-the-counter sales of the so-called morning after pill—a pill which is supposed to help women who are harboring regret over a sexual encounter the night before. Of course, it doesn’t matter that the FDA is hesitant to give the pills out like candy because it doesn’t want to promote promiscuity among young people.

No, ACOG won’t let the facts stand in the way of its misguided idea of scientific progress. In fact, the gynecologists’ group employs this fuzzy reasoning for promoting morning after pill prescriptions: women tend to have sex on weekends. Maybe women also tend to have beer on Saturday nights. Does that mean their family doctors should load them up with six packs every time they come in for flu shots?

The fact is, the pro-abortion contingent of ACOG is running scared. Pharmacists throughout the country have said they don’t want to dispense the morning after pill, also known as emergency "contraception," because they have religious and moral objections to it. The abortionists know that if they can get women hooked on the morning after pill that they’ll have more support for their agenda—which includes abortion any time for any reason, anywhere

It’s interesting to note that some experts have come to the conclusion that there really isn’t a great demand for the morning after pill. In other words, pharmacies are not going to go out of business for refusing to stock it. So the only way for big drug companies to sell the morning after pill and other such concoctions is to market them directly to doctors

Every time a woman comes into a gynecologist’s office, ACOG wants the doctor to offer her advance prescriptions of the morning after pill. But it is apparently not enough to simply make the offer; indeed, some women are reporting that their gynecologists are insisting that they take the prescription—even if they say repeatedly that they don’t want it. The doctors urge them, "it’s good for a year!" This kind of scenario makes a mockery out of the phrase "pro-choice." In a situation like this, how can anyone not conclude that "pro-choice" is really "pro-abortion?"

Apparently, ACOG sees no reason for gynecologists to inform their patients that the morning after pill can cause abortions—even if some women have strong moral objections to abortion. For ACOG, the pill is a simple solution to the estimated 2.7 million unplanned pregnancies that occur each year.

But the fact of the matter is, a number of us were the result of unplanned pregnancies. You don’t have to be planned—or even wanted by your natural parents—in order to make a difference in this world. Every human life is precious from the moment of conception—and no dictate from ACOG can change that.

Doctors routinely tell pregnant women not to take any medication during their pregnancies for fear that it will harm their unborn children. If a pregnant woman can’t take an aspirin, how can doctors assume that it’s safe for her to take the morning after pill? What if the pill "fails" and the woman remains pregnant? Or what if the woman takes the pill when she’s already six weeks along? And what’s to prevent the pill from getting into the hands of the woman’s impressionable 13-year-old daughter, who sees the pill as a good excuse to "hook up" with a boy she barely knows? Will ACOG pay for the girl’s counseling when she discovers that the boy who took away her virginity is a stalker or 40 years old?