Who is Buying Your Daughter Plan B?

Better get to know your daughter’s boyfriend…and his parents.

A few years back, a mother in Iowa contacted Iowa Right to Life, distraught that her 16 year-old daughter was taken to Planned Parenthood for an abortion without her knowledge. Who took her to Planned Parenthood? The mother of her daughter’s boyfriend.

The boyfriend’s mother signed the parental notification paperwork with her own name. Planned Parenthood personnel did not check any IDs to verify who the woman was or if she was even related to the girl. Why? Because they don’t have to do so.

Under Iowa’s current Parental Notification Law, abortion providers do not have to verify that the person signing as the “parent” actually is the parent. Anyone can bring a minor in for an abortion and claim to be a girl’s parent – her boyfriend’s parent, a teacher or coach from school, or a statutory rapist she met on the Internet. That loophole in the law has never been closed. (IRTL News, Fall 2009)

The point of the story, however, is that 15 year-old girls may not be the ones making the Plan B over-the-counter purchase. It will be boyfriends, who will hold it out to the girl and say, “If you love me, you will take this.” Or it will be a boyfriend’s mother or father who will say to her, “Your parents never have to know.”

The scarier scenario will be the boyfriend who purchases Plan B and slips it into his girlfriend’s food, without her knowledge. This has already been done with RU-486 in several cases around the U.S.

Side Effects

Local college students have been telling Iowa Right to Life that young women on their campus are having sex every weekend and taking Plan B after each time.

Typical side effects of Plan B, according to WebMD.com, include: nausea, abdominal pain, fatigue, headache, menstrual changes, dizziness, breast tenderness, vomiting, diarrhea.

But Plan B is not meant to be taken repeatedly. An MD and hormone specialist told Fox News there are many more serious documented side effects that come from overusing Plan B. Those include: “significant weight gain, depression, ovarian cyst enlargement, gall bladder disease, high blood pressure, and increased risk of ectopic pregnancy,” according to Dr. Jennifer Landa of BodyLogicMD. (Fox News, April 5, 2013.)

Plan B’s own website warns about ectopic pregnancy: “If your patient experiences severe abdominal pain, she may have an ectopic pregnancy and should seek immediate medical attention. “ (www.planbonestep.com)

Planned Parenthood’s website downplays side effects and withholds serious side effects: “There have been no reports of serious complications among the millions of women who have used the morning-after pill. Side effects are uncommon, and usually stop within a day or two.” (www.Plannedparenthood.com//health-topics/emergency-contraception-morning-after-pill-4363.asp)

But Planned Parenthood must be getting the same information that IRTL is about the college women using Plan B every time they have sex, because later on the same page, Planned Parenthood’s website says, “Emergency contraception should not be used as a form of ongoing birth control because there are other forms of birth control that are a lot more effective and less expensive.”
(www.Plannedparenthood.com//health-topics/emergency-contraception-morning-after-pill-4363.asp)

Instead of warning women about the dangers, Planned Parenthood turns it into a cheap come-on to sign up women for their profitable “C-mail” program, so Planned Parenthood can buy the contraceptives for $2.98 and bill Medicaid for $26.32 for the same contraceptives.

The battle over Plan B continues and it’s a culture war. Keep writing letters to the editor about the dangerous side-effects and talking to your friends and neighbors. Visit www.iowaRTL.org for background and latest news on Plan B.

Plan B: How it works…

Plan B also known as “Emergency Contraception” is a specific brand, which contains the hormone progestin levonorgestrel, a high dosage of the same ingredient found in many birth control pills, without the estrogen.

Like a birth control pill, Plan B does not always stop conception from occurring, but hardens the lining of the uterus, so a conceived child will not implant in the uterine wall and essentially be aborted.

Different from RU-486:

While Plan B may cause an abortion, it is different from RU-486 abortion pills—which are really a cocktail of abortion pills that kill the baby in the womb, then later (sometimes days, sometimes weeks) expel the dead baby.

For more information: www.iowaRTL.org/get-the-facts