Lima, Peru, Feb 12, 2009 / 14:55 pm
The Director for Latin America of the Population Research Institute, Carlos Polo, expressed his bewilderment this week at the “efficiency” of Peru’s Ministry of Health in coordinating the distribution of the morning after pill at all of the country’s health care facilitates just days after the a federal Court in Lima ruled the pill is not an abortifacient.
Speaking to Catholic News Agency, Polo pointed to statements by Lucy Del Carpio, National Coordinator for Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare Strategies of the Ministry of Health, who said on Peruvian radio that “in all the healthcare facilities of the country the Emergency Oral Contraceptive, also known as the morning after pill, is being distributed free of charge.”
“Could the Ministry of Health be so efficient in correcting this ‘deficiency’ of morning after pills for poor women in just a few days? Does the Ministry act just as quickly in the case of antibiotics, vaccines and other basic medicines?” Polo questioned.
Polo noted that in 2004, then-Minister of Justice, Baldo Kresalia, said the morning after pill could be constitutional and could therefore be distributed if it was shown that it was not an abortifacient.
“Or have they been ignoring the courts all this time? I think more than one explanation needs to given here,” Polo went on to say, adding that “information from manufacturers of the drug in developed countries continues to indicate that the drug has an anti-implantation mechanism.”
Therefore Polo criticized the left wing NGOs, former ministers and congressmen who are “praising” the ruling by the Court, claiming that it is beneficial to poor women.
He expressed amazement at how the promoters of the pill conspired to argue that the “morning after pill is not abortifacient because they take the moment of implantation to be the beginning of life.” Polo noted in response that science has shown that human life begins “with the fertilization of the egg by the sperm.”