The Truth About Plan B

By Rev. Douglas W. Merkey

This article has been written by the Pregnancy Resource Centers of Greater St. Louis (PRC) to equip people with the truth about the controversial drug referred to as “Plan B.” What follows is a partial quotation of a press release issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on August 24, 2006 that announced the newly-approved over-the-counter availability of “Plan B” drugs: “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced approval of Plan B, a contraceptive drug, as an over-the-counter (OTC) option for women aged 18 and older. Plan B is often referred to as emergency contraception or ‘the morning after pill.’ …Plan B will remain available as a prescription-only product for women age 17 and under.”

You may ask, “What does this have to do with pro-life work?” The answer is: “Everything!” For starters, we must understand how Plan B works. It works by three primary mechanisms, as described in the following quote by its manufacturer, Duramed (a division of Barr Pharmaceuticals): “Plan B works like a regular birth control pill. It prevents pregnancy mainly by stopping the release of an egg from the ovary, and may also prevent the fertilization of an egg (the uniting of sperm with the egg). Plan B may also work by preventing it from attaching to the uterus (womb). It is important to know that Plan B will not affect a fertilized egg already attached to the uterus; it will not affect an existing pregnancy.” (Emphasis added)

It’s the bolded sentence in the statement above, the third means by which Plan B does its work, which is a major problem morally speaking. The “it” in that sentence refers to a sperm united to an egg – a detail that is obscured in the way the statement itself is written. Duramed’s drug insert for this medication makes the truth a little more clear, though not entirely. Under the heading “Clinical Pharmacology,” which describes how the drug actually works, they state, “In addition, it [Plan B] may inhibit implantation (by altering the endometrium).”

In layman’s terms, the drug manufacturer states that one of the ways Plan B works is by making the womb (the womb’s lining is called the endometrium) inhospitable to a newly fertilized egg (i.e. an unborn human being), causing it to be aborted. Succinctly put, Plan B can work by causing the abortion of a newly conceived human being.

This fact is not something that the makers of Plan B want to be too clear about. In fact, their marketing materials push so strongly in the other direction that the average person would think that Plan B is the furthest thing from an abortion-causing drug. On their website, they make the argument that “It is important to know that Plan B® is not RU-486 (the abortion pill).” True enough. Plan B and RU-486 are, in fact, two different drugs. The former must be taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex and the latter is “to terminate a pregnancy of 49 days or less duration.”

The truth is that Plan B does not abort a child later in the pregnancy like RU-486 does, but it certainly can (their own clinical pharmacology affirms it) abort a child within the first several (1-5) days or so after conception. For this reason, Plan B is morally objectionable. God’s Word is clear that human life begins at conception (Ps. 139), and that personhood even begins before conception in God’s sight (Jer. 1:5, Isa. 49:1, Gal. 1:15).

Aside from its potential to cause an abortion, Plan B raises many other concerns that are not discussed in this brief primer. It has been debated that the drug may lead to an increase in sexual diseases, promiscuity and casual sex. Others have suggested that Plan B will actually increase the surgical abortion rate, due to an increase in sexual irresponsibility, beyond what abortions it may cause in and of itself through its third mechanism of operation. And then there are the issues surrounding the deceptive nature of Plan B’s marketing materials and the destructive, confusing mixed messages they send to our culture, and especially our young people.

The PRC recognizes the God-given sanctity of all unborn human life from the moment of conception onward. Therefore, we will never dispense or recommend Plan B or similar drugs to our clients. We will make the truth about Plan B known in keeping with the facts here presented. We urge all our constituents to become as informed as possible on the truth about Plan B.

Rev. Douglas W. Merkey is the Chaplain and Director of Church Relations for the Pregnancy Resource Centers of Greater St. Louis (PRC) and may be reached by calling (314) 783-3040 or visiting PRC’s website at www.prcmo.net.