To the Editor:
As college students across the nation prepare to embark on journeys to a variety of spring break destinations, a curious coincidence has developed in the advertising campaign of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Planned Parenthood offers a wide range of reproductive healthcare services, some of which include family planning, counseling, birth control, voluntary sterilization, abortion or abortion referral and emergency contraception.
With keen appreciation for the increased sexual activity many college students engage in on spring break, Planned Parenthood widely promotes emergency contraception to be used in the event of unprotected vaginal intercourse. Although Planned Parenthood claims that emergency contraceptives, such as the Morning After Pill and Intrauterine Devices, will not cause an abortion, many experts disagree.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, emergency contraception can prevent pregnancy by stopping ovulation or fertilization. The Department additionally states that “emergency contraception also stops a fertilized egg from attaching or implanting itself to the wall of the uterus.” The Family Research Council, noting similar findings, states that “while emergency contraceptives can prevent ovulation and therefore act as a true contraceptive, it can also destroy a human life already conceived by preventing that life from embedding in the mother’s womb.”
In other words, while emergency contraception can act as a contraceptive by preventing ovulation or fertilization, it can also prevent the implantation in the uterus of a life conceived at fertilization, thereby acting as an abortifacient.
Despite the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of emergency contraceptives in 1998, there are no long-term studies to show whether high dosage of these chemicals is detrimental to the health of women.
Planned Parenthood deceives college students in its advertisements for emergency contraception. Regardless of their claim that emergency contraception will not cause an abortion, we strongly encourage students to abstain from premarital sexual activity and to avoid at all costs the use of emergency contraception, because of its abortifacient action.

Saint Louis University, Students for Life