Over the last week, there has been much in the news that Plan B and similar products that use the drug levonorgestrel do not work in women who weigh more than 176 pounds and have a decreased effect in women who weigh more than 165 pounds.
“The reported average weight of women over 20 years old in the United States is 164 pounds. The average weight of women in college is 155 pounds. Taller girls have ideal weights that pass the 165-pound threshold where Plan B stops working effectively,” says Jim Sedlak, vice president of American Life League (ALL). “So, does Plan B actually reduce unintended pregnancies?”
Sedlak points to a UPI story from Nov. 30. In it, a senior medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, said, “We’ve all been disappointed that on the population level, it just hasn’t had the effect we hoped. … The unintended pregnancy rate hasn’t changed at all.”
According to Sedlak, this means that older teens and college students have ingested these massive doses of hormones with adverse side effects for more than 15 years—hormones that do not work for average college girls and most high school students.
The most common immediate Plan B side effects include menstrual changes (26 percent), nausea (23 percent), abdominal pain (18 percent), fatigue (17 percent), headache (17 percent), dizziness (11 percent) and breast tenderness (11 percent). All this for a pill that is known to be generally ineffective for its intended use and that may have undiscovered risks in long-term use, Sedlak says.
“Will Planned Parenthood put women’s health before profits?” Sedlak asks. “No. Remember, with Obamacare, the girls will not have to pay anything to get this ‘contraceptive product.’ Even though morning-after pills do not work most of the time, Planned Parenthood will happily collect millions of dollars from taxpayers and employers to distribute them.
“ALL has always been opposed to Plan B because, when it works, it causes living human beings in their embryonic stage to die. This new information is just another reason such drugs should be taken off the market completely.”
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