The Emergency Contraceptive... or Abortifacient?

Some days ago I saw a TV ad in which a young woman urges the use of the “emergency contraceptive.” She laments having had her child. What will that child feel when he hears her publicly lamenting that she gave him life? The incredible thing about the ad is that it promotes the sale of a pharmaceutical product containing a massive dose of the hormone levonorgestrel (with many adverse effects and contraindications, which in most countries requires a prescription) as if it were a piece of candy.

When people want to sell something, they sometimes play on the ignorance of those who have fallen into early sexual activity. “As long as you have safe sex, there’s no problem,” some say. What is never said is how many sexually transmitted diseases can be contracted even when using a condom. What is never said is the harm you do to yourself or to someone else, and the mark left (in memory and in the heart) when sex is used lightly.

What that ad does not mention is the harm caused by this pill (especially in girls and teenagers who use it every month, or even more than once a month), which in many cases acts not as a contraceptive but as an abortifacient; because if conception takes place, that little pill ends that new life by preventing the fertilized egg from implanting. At the moment the egg and sperm unite (from 30 minutes to 4 or 5 hours after intercourse), the entire genetic makeup is defined that gives that new being its unique characteristics (eye color, hair, height and so on), a being who also has a soul (for those who believe in God).

Another problem with that ad is that it promotes sexual license among children and young people. Those who pay for that advertising, and the owners of the channels that broadcast it, seem not to understand the deep meaning of sex. It is a commitment in which two people give themselves to each other completely. And for that self-giving to be complete, it must take place within marriage, with the responsible attitude of those who are ready to welcome, care for, love and educate the children who may be conceived. When sex is lived apart from its deep meaning, it falls into endless distortions. One of them is to regard the other person simply as an object of pleasure. Another is to have sex outside marriage with one or several partners (of the other or the same sex), or to commit adultery, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Another distortion is the one that leads to an anti-life mentality, through the use of a range of methods that “protect” against a child or, if a life begins, prevent the fertilized egg from implanting (as is also the case with the well-known IUD, which is hardly seen in the United States anymore but is mass-produced for export to Third World countries).

When children and teenagers receive a serious and objective education in love and responsibility, we find many brave young people determined to avoid sexual relations before marriage. Why not follow those examples? The World Health Organization recommends sexual abstinence and monogamy as highly safe and effective measures for preventing sexually transmitted infections. Why not talk about that instead of promoting sexual license? Why not talk, too, about the many happy marriages that live their mutual self-giving in complete fidelity, not afraid of children but full of hope in them (that could be an excellent subject for a soap opera script)?

Finally, it is important to stress that pharmaceutical companies should devote themselves to serving life and health and to supporting motherhood, not to marketing products that can harm women and cause the death of millions of embryos. That way we will have a fairer world and, above all, one more determined to love, welcome and serve those little people who fill our world with great joy and hope: children.