4. If elected, will you support legislative or regulatory measures that would prohibit the dispensing of abortion-inducing pharmaceuticals?

This question concerns abortion drugs such as RU-486 and abortifacients such as the morning after pill.

It is an issue of major controversy both in Canada and the United States concerning not just abortion but also significant health risks to women and the watering down of normal pharmaceutical testing and approval standards for these pills. As well, unusual over the counter dispensation privileges for the high dosage morning after pills contradicts normal medical safety standards for such medications.

Ru-486 and similar drugs are formulated specifically to cause an abortion. They involve the consumption of powerful drugs to force the expulsion of an early age unborn child. These are dangerous drugs and the process of the death and expulsion of the child, usually at home, is often traumatic for women.

See
Public Documents Reveal Numerous RU-486 Complications

Emergency contraception pills, or ECPs, such as Preven or Plan B, are high doses of the hormones found in regular birth-control pills, taken in two steps within 72 hours of sex.  ECPs (emergency contraceptive pills) work to stop ovulation from taking place, stop the sperm from coming down the tube, or stop a fertilized egg from becoming implanted."

They make the lining of the uterus inhospitable to a living, human embryo who may and could have been conceived before the pills take effect. The embryo is unable to implant and gain nourishment, so it dies.

Here is an excerpt from The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th Edition, by Moore and Persaud (P. 532):

“Postcoital [after intercourse] birth control pills... Ovarian hormones (estrogen) taken in large doses within 72 hours after sexual intercourse usually prevent implantation of the blastocyst [embryo]... These hormones prevent implantation, not fertilization. Consequently, they should not be called contraceptive pills [italics added]. Conception occurs but the blastocyst does not implant. It would be more appropriate to call them "contraimplantation pills." Because the term abortion refers to a premature stoppage of a pregnancy, the term abortion could be applied to such an early termination of pregnancy.”

Side effects: About 50% of women experience nausea and 20% vomit. The use of ECPs increases the risk of ectopic pregnancy. There is also a significant risk of developing blood clots and blockage of blood vessels - which may lead to heart attacks, strokes. Studies have indicated that the risk of both benign and malignant liver tumors may be increased by Preven use. Smoking and the use of Preven greatly increase the chance of developing possibly fatal heart disease. Distribution of the early forms of birth control, which were higher dosage pills, was halted precisely because of regular occurrences of these outcomes. ECPs are even higher dosage pills than the early birth control pills.

Experts argue that making the pills more accessible could lead to teens engaging in activities they might otherwise not do, based on the false sense of security inherent with availability of the pill. Increased availability of the pill also raises concerns over increased exposure to sexually transmitted infections, that in turn spark a significant increase in cancer and infertility. As well, a predictable, growing tendency to use these high dosage pills as a regular form of birth control is raising concerns about additional serious health issues among repeat users. The effect of long term use of ECPs is not known at this time.