American Society of Reproductive Medicine Statement Confirms the Pill Causes Abortion

By Ellen M. Rice

December 12, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com)—Amidst an ongoing debate among prolife advocates about whether to classify the Pill as an abortifacient or a prophylactic, pro-abortion advocates have published an authoritative statement declaring that the Pill prevents implantation of embryos, thereby causing an abortion. 

In a supplement to its November 2008 issue, top reproductive health journal Fertility and Sterility published the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) statement, “Hormonal contraception: recent advances and controversies.” 

In a summary of the development of contraception in the United States the statement called oral contraceptives the “most widely used” reversible method.  In the “wide variety” of oral contraceptives that are available, the “mechanisms of action” are the same, said the statement: “inhibition of ovulation, alteration in the cervical mucus, and/or modification of the endometrium, thus preventing implantation.”  

Pro-life advocates who oppose abortion, but not contraception, have long considered the Pill as an ethical contraceptive option, as opposed to the IUD, which causes abortions by preventing implantation.  However, the statement by the ASRM clearly indicates that the pill is medically classified as a drug that acts by “preventing implantation,” thereby causing the death of a fertilized embryo—a unique and living human being.   

A large body of literature supports this statement, including articles from Fertility and Sterility.  The most significant of these is a 1996 study by a group of OB/GYNs from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, that concluded that “impaired uterine receptivity” is “one mechanism by which OCs exert their contraceptive actions.” 

That promise was realized by the pill, which was the result of a collaboration between physiology researcher Gregory PIncus and Dr. John Rock, a Catholic who was trying to develop a hormonal method to help infertile women conceive. In one of the many unintended consequences in the history of science, Rock discovered that a hormone-based pill could also be used to prevent conception by suppressing ovulation. The research was financed initially by Katharine Dexter McCormick, a longtime friend of Margaret Sanger and wife of the heir to the International Harvester fortune. Sanger, who was born in 1879 and watched her Catholic mother die after 18 pregnancies, had a lifelong dream of a contraceptive that women would be able to use to limit their fertility without the cooperation or even the knowledge of men. She dreamed of a world in which a woman's fate would not be determined by a husband who did not care whether he made her pregnant 18 times. That dream was realized, for millions of women around the world in societies with widely varying attitudes toward women's rights, with the development of the pill.

Thus, the pill was hardly a male plot to "control" women's bodies; it was the culmination of a long research effort, financed at the outset by a woman and carried out by two men who wanted women to have more, not less, power over their reproductive lives. Dr. Rock had even hoped that the pill, because it works by manipulating a woman's hormonal system, would be approved by the Catholic Church, which forbade older barrier methods of birth control. In this he was disappointed, but Catholic women used the pill in huge numbers anyway.

A dirty, little secret in the pharmaceutical world is that the Pill if taken in a certain way can actually work AFTER conception by preventing the embryo from implanting on the uterine wall. In other words, the pill can cause the baby to die. This is simply abortion by another name.

The “Morning After” Pill is nothing more than the regular birth control pill taken in massive dosage to insure that the embryo will not implant. When taken as prescribed (every day) the birth control pill prevents conception by: 1. usually preventing ovulation, and 2. thickening cervical mucous to delay/interfere with sperm entry through the cervix.

If the pill fails to prevent ovulation and conception, it prevents the fertilized egg from growing through "changes in the endometrium which reduce the likelihood of implantation" (a form of abortion).

When taken as a “morning after pill” the mechanism of action is to prevent implantation of a conceptus (zygote, the fertilized egg). Prevention of implantation can also be a factor in preventing pregnancy in those women who forget to take the pill every day, and therefore ovulate. Ovulation can occasionally occur even when a woman never misses a pill [between 1 and 3 of very 100 women get pregnant while on the pill, and "research indicates that figure may be considerably higher, up to 4% for 'good compliers' and 8% for 'poor compliers'" (Potter, "How Effective Are Contraceptives?" Obstetrics and Gynecology 1996; 135:13S-23S.)].

Although implantation prevention is apparently not the mechanism of action for the vast majority of women, especially for those who take the pill as prescribed, women who take birth control pills do risk the chance of aborting (killing) their unborn child.

Sources for detailed information

• Published statement by pro-life physicians: A Declaration of Life / By pharmacists: A Pill You May Not Want to Swallow
• On-line booklet: Does Birth Control Cause Abortions?
• A Dialogue about Birth Control by Randy Alcorn
• Randy Alcorn's Response to a statement issued on birth control pills by pro-life Ob/Gyns
• Birth Control Pill: Abortifacient and Contraceptive by William F. Colliton, Jr., M.D., FACOG, Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at George Washington University Medical Center
• The Growing Debate About the Abortifacient Effect of the Birth Control Pill and the Principle of the Double Effect by Walter L. Larimore, M.D.
• Pharmacists for Life International, see especially Conscience Clause FAQs, Newsletters
• Pharmacists for Life International, Canada
• Concerned Pharmacists for Conscience
• Canadian Physicians for Life
• American Life League