While Big Tech is busy banning conservative viewpoints in digital and social media for alleged violations of their “community standards,” they are only too happy to help promote the left’s extreme agenda, including abortion. In fact, Planned Parenthood has launched a new app to help women who “make a mistake” and engage in unprotected sex make sure they don’t have a baby. The app is called Planned Parenthood Direct and it euphemistically promises to provide women with “emergency contraception.”
Planned Parenthood promises women that if they take the pill Ella (Ulipristal acetate) within five days of engaging in unprotected sex, their chances of “becoming pregnant” decreases by up to 85%. Their Planned Parenthood Direct app is designed to get them Ella as soon as possible, ideally overnight. And in case something might interfere with this, they encourage women to get Ella ahead of time and keep it in their medicine cabinet – “just in case.”
Ella requires a prescription, which ordinarily requires a person to be examined by a health care provider with the medical training needed to assess health conditions and the legal authority to write prescriptions. But the Planned Parenthood Direct app avoids this problem by providing the woman a prescription directly through the app. All you have to do is answer a few questions, upload a confidential selfie photo, enter payment information and…voila…your “emergency contraception” will be on its way. Order by 1pm eastern time Monday through Thursday and your order will be delivered to you the next day.
The app is based on the premise that the user is providing accurate information, but what if they’re not? For example, what if a minor girl wants “emergency contraception” through the app? It appears all she has to do is enter a date of birth that makes her appear to be older. That’s good enough for Planned Parenthood. They tell users, “In some cases, the answers you give here will be the only source of information that our providers use to evaluate and treat you.” They must know that minors will be tempted to use their app because they make it clear they expect the “information you give is truthful including: your location; your health information; your age.”
Setting aside the potential for minor girls to misuse the app, any thinking person can readily ascertain that to accept Planned Parenthood’s description of Ella as “emergency contraception” requires the willing suspension of disbelief. After all, virtually everybody agrees that conception occurs when sperm fertilizes an ovum and from that very moment, the woman is pregnant. Within hours her body begins to undergo changes to allow the conceived unique being to live and grow in the woman’s womb. You cannot “prevent pregnancy” five days after pregnancy has already occurred. Doing so is called an abortion, and that is what Planned Parenthood is actually promoting. It’s an abortion app.
Planned Parenthood knows that selling abortions via their app will be a big turn off for most women. That is why they pretend that the Ella pill is birth control. They go to great lengths to try to convince women that they are not being complicit in abortion by taking Ella, telling them, “Emergency contraception is birth control, not abortion. It doesn’t end a pregnancy – it prevents one.”
How can a woman whose egg has been fertilized by sperm be said not to be pregnant? It requires the same type of manipulation of logic and language that Bill Clinton used to defend his statement under oath that there was nothing going on between him and Monica Lewinski. “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
Planned Parenthood argues that there are three stages of conception – ovulation, fertilization and implantation. Only after the embryo (which they call a “ball of cells” to avoid any inference that it is a human being) has been implanted in the lining of the uterus do they consider the woman (or under today’s parlance of the woke a “birthing person”) to be pregnant.
Sadly, Planned Parenthood enjoys cover from a prominent medical association in their distortion of when pregnancy occurs. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) makes the same preposterous claim, one that is rejected by the overwhelming number of obstetric physicians and gynecologists. In fact, a survey of over 1,000 OB-GYNs published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that only 28% of OB-GYNs accepted the ACOG definition of when pregnancy begins. Some 57% of the profession believe conception begins at the moment of fertilization while the rest are unsure.
Why would ACOG promote the Planned Parenthood position that pregnancy occurs with implantation when members of their own profession overwhelmingly reject that position? The answer is simple: OB-GYNS are the ones who perform many of the nation’s abortions. And as the author of the survey study said, if pregnancy is said to begin at fertilization, “then you can see why any technology that prevents implantation would be problematic.”
When an embryo is removed from the lining of the uterus, the endometrium, it is aborted. This can be done medically through drugs like RU-486. Similarly, when an embryo is prevented from implanting in the endometrium, it is aborted.
Planned Parenthood contends that Ella works by preventing ovulation of an egg thus preventing fertilization. However, medical experts such as those at Drugs.com say that Ella “may also make it harder for a fertilized egg to attach to the uterus.” Furthermore, Ella’s FDA-approved drug label states that “alterations to the endometrium that may affect implantation may also contribute to efficacy.”
A number of non-profit pro-life research organizations, including the Charlotte Lozier Institute, report that Ella and RU-486 share similar chemical properties. Both are progesterone antagonists that act by blocking progesterone receptors in the endometrium. “This action can prevent the endometrium from becoming capable of receiving and nurturing the embryo,” the Institute reports. An Issue Brief published by the Family Research Council, citing numerous medical authorities for support of its statements, says flatly, “Ella can cause an abortion…Ella can cause the demise of an embryo already implanted in its mother’s womb, in addition to preventing implantation after fertilization.”
It is unfortunate that women are being misled about the nature of the Ella “emergency contraception” pill. Contrary to their assertions, Planned Parenthood is not promoting “birth control” through their app, they are promoting abortion. If their “community standards” mean anything, Big Tech platforms should look into banning this app, or at a minimum requiring that women receive a clear warning before signing up to receive the Ella abortion pill. But protecting women from misinformation from Planned Parenthood Direct’s app is not deemed to be necessary by tech’s “community standards.” Instead, their standards lead them to ban promotion of information from pro-life groups like Live Action and Heartbeat International about how women experiencing immediate regret after taking the abortion pill might explore reversing the effects of the pill. Doing that, Google and other Big Tech giants insist, is “misinformation.”