By Emily Murray

For years there has been a hot debate surrounding the use of emergency contraception, more commonly referred to as “the morning after pill.” The main source of conflict has revolved around the exact way in which the pill works and in light of new research, perhaps even the medical professionals most familiar with it’s use have had it wrong.

The pill  is used by women who either did not use a method of  contraception at all or have experienced contraceptive failure and the label inside the box says that it works by delaying ovulation or may also block a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. It is the second part of that sentence that has not sat will with the pro-life backers. Essentially their belief is that life begins at fertilization which would therefore (with this logic in mind) render this type of back up birth control as an abortion.

Yesterday however the New York Times broke the news that they feel this claim is actually unfounded.

In this research, they have discovered that while the websites and package inserts do say that it may prevent implantation there is actually no real scientific backing to support this, meaning that no studies have confirmed this to actually be true. It appears the only evidence about why the pill is effective is that it delays ovulation, which would mean that fertilization never even had a chance to occur.

In the midst of the whole debate, the morning after pill (Plan B or ella) has been likened to the abortion pill known as RU-486 which actually causes the implanted embryos to be destroyed. If scientific research is looked at more closely however and scientific guesses are put aside, there is really nothing similar between how these two medications work.

Ordinarily the claims made by the FDA regarding how a medication works is backed entirely by science but with the morning after pill the organization simply said “it may” happen but without the scientific proof necessary to validate this claim it appears that there is no validity to this statement and it has done nothing more than spark a hot debate.

Those who are still against the use of the morning after pill have said that they feel that the FDA or scientists could not completely rule out the chance that implantation may be prevented in some cases therefore it still may lead to their definition of abortion in some cases.

What do you think?

If there is no scientific evidence to back up the statement that the morning after pill may prevent implantation is it a valid concern still?