A new study raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the Plan B morning-after pill in preventing pregnancy. This study (published at the end of May 2007 in the medical journal Fertility and Sterility) found Plan B only 49% effective in the first 24 hours with a drop to 8% by 72 hours in preventing pregnancy. Plan B advocates claim it will prevent pregnancy at least 85% of the time and never causes an abortion.

The extremely poor results revealed in Fertility and Sterility were “improved” by Plan B’s actual abortifacient effect, which is even admitted on Barr Lab’s web site promoting Plan B to doctors. When the abortions caused by Plan B are counted, it reached 90% effectiveness within 24 hours, but was still only 16% effective by 72 hours.

Don’t expect any investigation of Plan B’s reliability problems any time soon. Reporters are already booked up investigating pharmacists who are not willing to dispense Plan B.  A number of states, including Illinois, are forcing pharmacists to dispense this abortifacient drug.

Planned Parenthood is leading efforts to find and punish any pharmacist not willing to dispense Plan B. One can only conclude that access to Plan B is their number one “health care” priority. Of course, given this new information about how ineffective Plan B really is, Planned Parenthood’s intensity for widespread use of Plan B reveals their anticipation of more revenue from abortions when Plan B fails.

That is how Planned Parenthood practices health care. Their recent annual report admits to 264,943 abortions committed in 2005, not including those caused by the 1,245,506 “emergency contraception kits” they distributed. They no longer bother to report on adoption referrals (only 1414 in their previous report when they committed 255,015 abortions). Apparently, parenthood is not part of their plan, but abortions committed have consistently increased each year for at least 20 years.

Bill Beckman