Some birth control options could be banned if they are seen as abortion methods rather than pregnancy prevention, experts say

Rebecca Cohen
Updated ·2 min read
5

  • Some methods of birth control could be outlawed if they are seen as techniques to terminate a pregnancy.

  • Experts told Insider that birth control is not used to terminate a pregnancy, but to prevent it.

  • One expert said she fears specifically Plan B and IUDs would be most likely to be outlawed.

Access to contraception could be severely restricted in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday, experts warned.

Insider spoke to reproductive health doctors before Friday's ruling but after a draft of the opinion was leaked in May about the realities of private health decisions in a post-Roe world.

Some methods of birth control could be prohibited if they are viewed as abortion-inducing methods rather than pregnancy prevention, Seema Mohapatra, a law professor at the SMU Dedman School of Law, told Insider.

For instance, she said the Plan B pill and IUDs are seen as abortifacients, or medications used to induce an abortion, rather than their true function — techniques to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Dr. Stephanie Gustin, a reproductive, endocrinology, and infertility specialist based in Omaha, Nebraska, told Insider that using contraception to induce abortions isn't scientifically accurate.

"The actual main way that combined oral contraceptives work is to alter the cervical mucus, with continuous progesterone exposure, thereby making it much harder for sperm to penetrate," Gustin told Insider.

The same goes for an IUD, she said, whose primary goal is to keep the cervical mucus unfavorable for sperm in progesterone releasing IUDs, or to impair the sperm directly due to the copper in a copper IUD.

"Its primary purpose isn't to inhibit ovulation. Progesterone is helping to prevent unwanted pregnancy among other things," she said.

She continued: "If someone read the bill as they wanted to and interpreted it in their own light, one could say this is abortion because it is making it so an egg cannot be fertilized, but we know that's not the case."

Read the original article on Business Insider