From Advocate Peter Cushen.
YOUR front-page article of 25 March (Morning-after pill row) refers to the morning-after pill as ’emergency contraception’.
First, you quote Dr Neera Watts, associate specialist in sexual and reproductive health at Le Bas Clinic in relation to the matter, who refers to it several times as ’emergency contraception’ and says that to refuse giving such ’emergency contraception on religious grounds . . . is putting women at risk – they could become pregnant and then end up having a termination’.
Secondly, your reporter Carly Lockhart says: ‘In Jersey, pharmacists have to be registered and undergo training to provide emergency contraception unless it is prescribed by a doctor.’ Thirdly, you quote David Christie in this context referring to ’emergency contraception’.
Levonelle 1500 and Levonelle One Step, the two similar brandings of the morning-after pill, each contain 1,500 micrograms of levonorgestrel. Although the morning-after pill may work as a contraceptive, ie as a drug to prevent conception, it can act also in an altogether different manner which may be considered to induce an abortion. Designed for use up to 72 hours after intercourse, it works in one of two ways.
First, it may act, as your article says, as a method of contraception by preventing or delaying ovulation or by altering the motility of the ovum or sperm in the fallopian tube.
Secondly, and this is where your article might be considered misleading, if conception has already taken place, it can stop the successful implantation of the embryo by affecting the lining of the womb; this is indeed accepted by the manufacturers, who state, after referring to the drug’s potential to act prior to conception, that it may also work by ‘stopping a fertilised egg form attaching itself to your womb lining’. It is this second manner in which it works which may be considered abortifacient.
Many women will not know precisely when they ovulate and therefore they will not know whether the morning-after pill has prevented conception or caused an abortion.
If pregnancy has commenced, the provisions of the Termination of Pregnancy (Jersey) Law 1997, as amended, would apply, as that law expressly provides that its provisions apply to ‘administering any drug for the purposes of inducing a termination’.
The contentious issue here is when pregnancy commences. Some, and this is the view of the UK government and the manufacturers of the drug, say that pregnancy only begins at implantation of the embryo in the womb. Others, including a number of leading embryologists, consider that pregnancy commences at conception when the egg is fertilised.
In this context, and putting faith issues aside, the words of the great Lord Denning, speaking in 1984 to the House of Lords in the debate on the Warnock Report on human fertilisation and embryology, are compelling: ‘I would suggest that the only logical point at which the law could start is that the child, the human being, starts at the moment of conception and fertilisation.
From that point onwards there is a gradual development in its environment. So I would hold – and I would hope the judges would hold – that from that moment there is a living, human being which is entitled to protection just as much as the law protects a living child.’
Moreover, it is important to realise that the morning-after pill is not 100% effective. Results from a clinical study in 2002 showed that the drug taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex prevented 84% of expected pregnancies. There can be various side effects, including risk of ectopic pregnancy, when the fertilised egg settles in the fallopian tube rather than the womb. An ectopic pregnancy can be a serious condition.
The facts above raise serious issues about the true nature of the morning-after pill which your article omitted and which I hope will shed some light on why many are opposed to its sale over the counter in the guise of a form of emergency contraception: in addition to having some serious potential side effects, it also acts as an abortifacient – it acts after, as well as before, conception – and, as such, its use is highly questionable on legal, moral and faith grounds.
Le Jardin,
Rue à Don,
Grouville.
