THE "PILL KILLS" CAMPAIGNS
Anti-contraceptive extremists are promoting a national “Pill Kills” campaign asserting that some forms of contraception can cause abortions. The goal: ban birth control.Seattle Post-Intelligencer writer D. Parvaz, in a June 6 column, calls the Pill Kills campaign “really, really ill-conceived,” adding that “it looks almost like a farce. Except it’s not.”
- Using pseudo-scientific arguments, these groups insist wrongly tha hormonal contraception can terminate a pregnancy.
- On June 7 every year, the anniversary of the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut Supreme Court decision that granted married couples the right to use contraceptives, these groups demonstrate at family planning clinics and spread disinformation. They have billboard campaigns and do other forms of public activities throughout the year.
“Pill Kills” claims have outraged and embarrassed even “pro-life” physicians.
- A group of 22 obstetrician-gynecologists opposed to abortion rights issued a statement in 1998 saying “We know of no existing scientific studies that validate [this] theory.” If a family uses hormonal contraception, the study said, “we are confident that they are not using an abortifacient.”
- Contraceptives work by preventing pregnancies, not ending them.
- Like condoms, IUDs and other “barrier” contraceptive methods, hormonal contraceptive pills, the “Morning-After Pill” and “Plan B” hormonal pills prevent pregnancy but have no effect on existing pregnancies.
- “Pill Kills” groups deliberately confuse legal, FDA-approved abortifacients like RU-486 (that can be used to end early pregnancies) with birth control pills (that prevent pregnancy) in order to mislead the public.
The argument involves two debates: when pregnancy begins, and how contraceptives work.
When does pregnancy begin?
- Scientists, including anti-abortion physicians, have long defined pregnancy as beginning when a fertilized egg implants in the womb.
- Implantation is the only event that triggers hormonal, physical and all the other changes in bodily function that allow the egg to receive nutrients and begin to divide and grow- i.e., pregnancy.
- “Pro-life” adherents, including the “Pill Kills” extremists, define pregnancy as beginning at the moment of fertilization, when sperm meets egg.
- Scientific research rejects that argument: fertilization triggers no “pregnancy response” of hormonal or other change in a woman’s body and in fact is undetectable.
How do contraceptives work?
- Contraceptive literature says all methods prevent pregnancy in one of three ways: inhibiting ovulation, inhibiting sperm transport and/or possibly creating what appears to be a “hostile environment” or thinned lining in the womb so that eggs do not implant.
- No scientific studies support the theory of a "hostile environment" that deters implantation.
- In fact many fertilized eggs implant and begin to grow in women’s fallopian tubes, abdominal cavities and other “hostile” tissues.
- “Pill Kills” extremists insist erroneously that hormonal contraceptives do prevent fertilized eggs from implanting. Having already mis-defined fertilized eggs as pregnancies, they then assert that hormonal contraceptives therefore cause abortions.
Organizations Leading “The Pill Kills” Campaigns:
Videos of the Extreme
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