For years, the FDA-approved label for Plan B One-Step and its competitors says the drug Works primarily by stopping the release of an egg from the ovary or possibly preventing the fertilization of an egg by sperm. But he also suggested that if an egg is fertilized, the drug can prevent it from attaching to the wall of the uterus.
It was advised on Friday to say “Plan B One-Step works before an egg is released from the ovary. As a result, Plan B One-Step usually stops or delays the release of an egg from the ovary. Plan B One -Step is a tablet that contains a higher dose of levonorgestrel than birth control pills and works the same way to prevent pregnancy.
The change was hailed as long overdue by abortion rights groups, who fear that anti-abortion groups, emboldened by the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wadewill use morning after pill misinformation to push for restrictions and bans on emergency contraception in state legislatures next year.
Since the court decision, the demand for the pills has skyrockets, As women feared their reproductive health options were under threat, advocates said.
It’s great that the FDA reflects the science. But I believe people who oppose it will continue to sue it,” said Mara Gandal-Powers, director of birth control access and senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center.
Anti-abortion activists and conservative state lawmakers have long cited the label of morning-after pills as “abortives” – drugs that can induce abortions. For those who believe that life begins when an egg is fertilized by a sperm, a drug that prevents implantation is tantamount to killing a human being.
Researchers have long disputed the idea of pill implantation blocks, however. Emergency contraception is “unlikely to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg,” according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists website.
The anti-abortion group Students for Life of America’s website describes Plan B as a drug that can create “an inhospitable uterine environment,” preventing implantation by the embryo. If that happens, “he or she will die,” the website says.
But guidelines added to the FDA’s website on Friday make it clear that the agency does not consider the drug an abortion pill.
“Plan B One-Step will not work if a person is already pregnant, meaning it will not affect an existing pregnancy…” he wrote. “The evidence does not prove that the drug affects implantation or maintaining a pregnancy after implantation, so it does not terminate a pregnancy.”
Elizabeth Nash, senior policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, said that “abortion opponents have a habit of intentionally misrepresenting these things as types of abortion, which doesn’t is simply not true. These are methods of contraception.
The morning after pill is different from the abortion pill, mifepristone, which is used with another medicine, misoprostol, to terminate a pregnancy less than 10 weeks old.
A spokeswoman for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion group, did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
The commonly used over-the-counter medication contains levonorgestrel, a synthetic hormone that can prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. It usually costs between $40 and $50; generic versions cost less. An FDA spokesperson said makers of generic versions have had a year to make similar labeling changes to their products.
Plan B’s label had not changed since 2006, when the drug was changed from a prescription drug to an over-the-counter drug.
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