The packaging for the Plan B First-Step abortifacient states that it is in now available without a prescription. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
(CNSNews.com) – A website created by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services--a division of the Department of Health and Human Services--provides misleading information about abortion-inducing drugs that, because of an Obamacare regulation, must be covered by almost all health-care plans in the United States.
On a page headlined “What are my birth control benefits?” healthcare.gov says that “Plans in the Health Insurance Marketplace must cover contraceptive methods” and that, “All Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptive methods prescribed by a woman’s doctor are covered, including … Emergency contraception, like Plan B and ella.”
But then it says: “Plans aren’t required to cover: Drugs to induce abortions.”
However, as Plan B's package itself states: “This product works mainly by preventing ovulation (egg release). It may also prevent fertilization of a released egg (joining of sperm and egg) or attachment of a fertilized egg to the uterus (implantation).”
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The Plan B label that says "this product works mainly by preventing ovulation (egg release.) It may also prevent fertilization of a released egg (joining of sperm and egg) or attachment of a fertilized egg to the uterus (implantation)." (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
On the Princeton.edu website are numerous quotes from medical textbooks and embryology texts that clearly explain and define the beginning of a new human life as starting at the moment of conception, the joining of sperm and egg.
“The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote,” states Langman’s Medical Embryology by T.W. Sadler, 7th edition, Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1995, p. 3.
Once the sperm successfully joins with the egg, they form a new entity, the zygote, which is a distinct “human” being – “development of a human begins with fertilization,” regardless of implantation on the uterine wall.
“Zygote. This cell, formed by the union of an ovum and a sperm (Gr. Zyg tos, yoked together), represents the beginning of a human being. The common expression ‘fertilized ovum’ refers to the zygote,” states Before We are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects by Keith L. Moore and T.V.N. Persaud, 4th edition, Philadelphia, W.B. Saunders Company, 1993, p. 1.
Plan B, therefore, can work by preventing the zygote – “the beginning of a human being” – from attaching to the uterus (implantation).
Other quotes on the Princeton site state the following:
"Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed.... The combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity."
"Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote)... The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual."
The other “birth control benefits” listed on the healthcare.gov website include barrier methods, like diaphragms or sponges, hormonal methods, such as birth control pills or vaginal rings, sterilization procedures, and “patient education and counseling.”