Category: birth control

Korea: Morning-after pills changed to OTC status, Daily BC pills changed to prescription only

~ Pharmer ~ 1 Comment

Morning-after pills can be bought OTC.

South Korea used to sell most forms of birth control over the counter, with the morning after pills being prescription only. They have reversed this trend, putting nine of eleven brands of morning after pill over the counter. Note: the articles in English do not specify if prescription status of Ulipristal acetate is affected in this change.

The KDFA justification for changing daily administered birth control pill brands to prescription status is due to their side effects, which were listed at the Korea Herald as: thrombosis, thromboembolism, thrombo puerperalis, myocardial infarction, cerebral hemorrhage and cerebral thrombosis among others. The pills are banned from being administered to women with breast cancer, endometrial cancer, hepatitis and thromboembolism. Their use is also restricted among women who are over 40 years old, obese, have headaches, depression or other related conditions.

The Korean association of OB-Gyns is not in favor of putting morning after pills over the counter, citing studies that show that their availability does not reduce abortion demand.
The Catholic Diocese of Cheongju has registered opposition, stating that they will call for KFDA head Lee Hee-sung to resign.

In the above linked report, as with most news articles in countries where abortion has become controversial, there is the unsupported claim that the BC works only by affecting ovulation.

In opposition to this, the Drinks Business Review reports:
“KFDA officer Cho Ki-ho said  according to their panel of experts, the main mechanism behind the emergency pills is the interference of hormonal action, linked to interference of implantation.”

“”We are hoping that the wider access to the morning-after pill will prevent unwanted pregnancies. Because the drug is effective within 12 hours from sexual intercourse and at utmost 72 hours, time and access to the drug is very important. The pill is not an ordinary contraceptive. It is for very limited, urgent and frightening situations only,” Cho said.”

For NYT, Evaluating Birth Control Mechanisms is Classed as POLITICAL SCIENCE

~ Pharmer ~ 2 Comments

Science at Issue in Debate on Morning-After Pill – NYTimes.com.

Pharmer is immensely amused by the NYT Political Science article purporting that Plan B, levonorgestrel (a progestin – synthetic progesterone analog) delays ovulation but has no effect upon post fertilization mechanisms. This claim certainly has a relationship to political ideology, but not to pharmacological science.

There is the suggestion that Plan B can operate to impede ovulation even when taken 72 hours after intercourse.

The usual life of sperm is 48 hours, and The usual lifespan of secondary oocytes (eggs) is 1 day. The most fertile time for a woman is the day of, and the day after ovulation.

Laughably entertaining is the suggestion that there is no time for levonorgestrel to affect thickness or receptivity of the uterine lining, but there is time for it to always work by delaying ovulation. Scroll back up to the lifespan of the gametes and THEN ponder that it takes about 7 days for the early human embryo to travel down the fallopian tubes into the uterus and implant in the uterine lining.

Seven days is not long enough for the morning after pill to affect feedback inhibition, transport, endometrial tissue, and implantation processes, yet 48 hours is claimed to be long enough to exert a perfect 100 percent mechanism for delaying ovulation so that sperm and ‘egg’ don’t meet.  (Remember when a woman is most fertile, the day of and the day after ovulation?)   It’s pathetic when leftist ideology replaces scientific analysis and inquiry in such a blatantly obvious manner.

James Trussell (population controller of Princeton) has changed his tune about the efficacy of Plan B. Now he wants to say that the pill is ridiculously ineffective, so that condoms, rhythm, and withdrawal are far superior in efficacy as birth control. This is what he needs to admit in order to claim that the Plan B doesn’t work if a woman has ovulated.

Progesterone hormones have multiple mechanisms of action. Progesterone receptors are found in various tissues, and their preponderance and activity undergo cyclic changes. These hormones largely affect gene expression. These effects are not instantaneous. The physiological effects of progestins on reproduction vary with the timing of their use. The morning after pill’s modes of action will vary depending on when in the cycle and how long after intercourse they are used.

One cannot prescribe progestins to patients to mitigate hypermenorrhea (excessive bleeding), and at the same time claim that they don’t affect the uterine lining.

Progestins given on a scheduled basis fail to prevent ovulation in about half of patients. This has been attached to the labeling of progestin only pills, which have been used to control excessive bleeding, as well as to prevent pregnancy.

Plan B is a progestin. Ella is a selective progesterone receptor blocker (like mifepristone, RU456). Each one will affect the reproductive processes in different, dose dependent and time dependent ways. Political Science author Pam Belluck needs to consider the drugs separately when attempting to evaluate them mechanistically.

Plan B, levonorgestrel, like ALL hormones, operates on many physiological processes, by many different means.

If the leftists ever manage to develop effective birth control drugs which operate ONLY by preventing the union of sperm and egg, we may proceed with the constitutional amendments to accurately define human life with no further impediments.

More at Jill Stanek’s place. and right HERE.

Stand Up for Religious Freedom

~ Pharmer ~ 1 Comment

Stand Up for Religious Freedom.

What are you doing on Friday?   Are you off work?   Look up the list of cities at the above link and show up for the nationwide rallies against Obama’s  birthcontrol-abortion-sterilization HHS  mandate.  They occur in each city at noon, local time, June 8, 2012.

Be assured that the media will ignore your efforts, but you might be uplifted in the presence of other like minded individuals who oppose Obama’s attack on religious freedom.

Obama Using underage girls to shill for Taxpayer Funded Birth Control

~ Pharmer

Here’s an Obama ad abusing 6 and 10 year old sisters images to shill for tax payer funded birth control.

What if these girls grow up to understand the mechanisms of the birth control drugs, and the health liabilities? Without their consent, their images have been used in a giant birth control ad…… as though the fulfullment of their dreams is somehow connected to another government funded “freebie”. This is almost as bad as when Obama used his girls to shill for abortion when they were 6 and 9 years old.

Obama Testing to see how many U.S. Catholics are Unsalvagable for Dems

~ Pharmer

Obama, the born-again Catholic | The Daily Caller.

The Obama campaign is touting Obama’s leftist Catholic connections during his community organizer days in Chicago. He is blaming his activism on lessons he learned while working with the likes of Father Pfleger who has since been censured by the church for placing political advocacy above Catholic teaching.
Obama’s campaign move is in response to his marked drop in approval among Catholics, due to his Abortion Healthcare Mandate. His recent advocacy of gay marriage is likely to affect his standing among Hispanic Catholics significantly.

*The media continues to ignore the tsunami of lawsuits filed by religious organizations against the Healthcare Mandate, which forces participation in abortion, artificial birth control and sterilization, all of which are antithetical to Catholic beliefs, and those of many other denominations.

43 Catholic Organizations file 12 lawsuits against the HHS mandate

~ Pharmer ~ 1 Comment

Forty-three Catholic organizations file lawsuits against HHS mandate :: Catholic News Agency (CNA).

Eleven or more lawsuits had already been filed against the Health and Human Services mandate to pay for birth control/abortion/sterilization, and now 43 more Catholic organizations have piled on.
Kathleen Sebelius, who had no idea that her mandate would be an unconstitutional problem, will be kept busy with depositions. Perhaps this will occupy some of her time and prevent her from doing further damage to health care and the economy.
The University of Steubenville, which has had to drop health coverage for its employees, is among the educational institutions suing the the Obama administration.

Kathleen Sebelius is the Beta Version of Sandra Fluke

~ Pharmer ~ 1 Comment

Both the Beta and the marketed version of the Birth Control Gurl program are equally worthless with respect to output content, but as you can see below,  Kathleen Sebelius, the Beta version, delivers the output haltingly as though there is a misconfiguration of  the audio output device driver.

Watch the fun as Congressman Trey Gowdy questions Sebelius on her efforts to examine the constitutionality of the HHS mandate.

Lefties Petition to Thank Obama for Birth Control| Democrats.com

~ Pharmer

Fight for Women's Health | Democrats.com.

This petition, linked above, has been online since at least March 26th and has yet to garner 5000 signatures. It appears that not too many women are canceling their distress over Obama’s War on Women’s Employment to fall down at his feet in gratitude for the free birth control.

Could it be that the Dems were wanting to offer women “protection” from pregnancy so they could ply another trade while they’re out of work?

Huffpost Pro-abort Screamers Cry About Standard Determination of Gestational Age

~ Pharmer

Arizona Abortion Bill: Legislators Pass Three Bills, Including One That Redefines When Life Begins.

Pharmer sometimes  feels that the reflex for breathing in leftists is connected to the reflex for lying.   The above Huff Po headline is the kind of thing which feeds this notion.

Physicians calculate gestational age from the time of the last missed period.  It’s an easier thing to do than guess the exact time of fertilization, to mark the beginning of life.   When Arizona legislators used this definition in a bill to define a limit of the age at which pre-born humans can be aborted,  John Celock shrieked that they are redefining when life begins…… two weeks before conception, he says.   (That would be an average.)   But Celock doesn’t realize that he fell off of the birth control bandwagon.   In his article he unwittingly re-connects conception with fertilization,  (as it always had been before the need to sell birth control pills.)   He forgot that the  ACOG and others  had  muddied the conception term,  and also the pregnancy term, to indicate the time of implantation  (about a week after fertilization).  This was to make the birth control pills  (all of which have  multiple mechanisms of action, some of which prevent implantation) more acceptable to women.

Pharmer notes that the left has never been able to get itself coordinated to accept  that  conception and pregnancy terms apply only after implantation.   Perhaps even they can’t totally  accept a lie that obvious. But Celock could not resist showing his ignorance of  the standard medical practice for estimating fetal age and time of expected delivery, with his dishonest headline.