After a decade of debates, the American FDA changes the leaflets of the emergency contraceptive pill – which can be purchased without a prescription and used within 72 hours of risky intercourse – clearly specifying that it is not an abortion practice, as has always been contested by pro-life associations. In each package it will be specified that levonorgestrel – this is the name of the molecule – does not prevent the fertilized oocyte from implanting itself in the uterus, something so far written on the leaflet, since there is no scientific evidence that this happens. Obviously this was the crux of the dispute given that some politicians close to the positions of anti-abortionists considered the fertilized oocyte an embryo and therefore a human life, making the attitude of those who took the pill and those who underwent an abortion essentially identical.
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But how does the pill work? The new leaflet specifies that the drug “takes action before the oocyte is released from the ovary”, and therefore before it is fertilized and not after. Furthermore – it is specified – the pill “does not work if you are already pregnant and in any case does not damage a pre-existing pregnancy”. And just to be even clearer, on the American agency’s website it is specified in a series of questions and answers that no, it is not an abortion method and that the pill works by intervening on ovulation, therefore before implantation.
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But why this need for clarity? In reality, everything stems from the ban on abortion imposed by some of the conservative states of the USA, which had led to fears that the ax could also fall on products that were accused of being abortifacients, such as emergency contraception. And the same operators who deal with reproductive health have asked for greater clarity, given that many of the people who turned to professionals believed that the pill was an abortifacient, showing resistance to its use. Not indifferent percentages: a recent study on 1400 people revealed in fact that 60% believed that the pill was an abortifacient to all intents and purposes since it prevented the embryo from taking root.
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After all, levonorgestrel had even entered the 2012 presidential election, when Mitt Romney called the pill abortive, in the company of Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. And when many conservative states allowed pharmacists to refuse to sell it.
In reality, however, no scientific evidence has ever demonstrated that the pill worked by preventing the embryo from attaching itself to the uterus and growing. And indeed, according to an FDA spokesman, “emerging data suggest that it does not inhibit the plant”. So much so that even MedlinePlus, the site of the Nihs, the American Institutes of Health, have deleted the passage in which it was written that emergency contraception could prevent the implantation of the embryo. And with MedlinePlus, other medical sites. In 2013, the same decision in Europe with the revision of the labeling of the emergency contraceptive pill.
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But why is the FDA only coming now? The agency’s response is that it has only now completed the review of a 2018 request presented by the Foundation Consumer Healthcare (which deals with over-the-counter products, i.e. purchasable without a prescription) which in 2017 had purchased the levonorgestrel brand, trade name in the USA Plan B, by Teva pharmaceuticals. A process, that of the revision, slowed down by the pandemic but not – the FDA specified – by political considerations.
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“The previous label caused confusion and was scientifically incorrect – commented Tara Evans, marketing director of the Foundation Consumer Healthcare – and our goal was to counteract misinformation, especially in light of last year’s events (the ban on abortion in some However, the FDA decision was not accepted by everyone and the Students for Life of America group, which had posted a video on Instagram claiming that the pill can cause abortions, today specifies that it rejects the FDA clarification. we said that it said on the package that it could cause an abortion. And what was the answer? Change the packaging”. With all due respect to scientific explanations.