Madrid, Spain, Apr 30, 2010 / 10:03 am
The National Association for the Defense of the Right to Conscientious Objection (ANDOC) has criticized Health Secretary Jose Martinez Olmos for calling the sale of the morning-after pill in pharmacies a triumph. The organization explained that by increasing the availability of the pill, ideological criteria has prevailed over scientific and health care concerns.
“The ones who should be congratulating themselves for the two-fold increase in sales of the pill are first of all, the manufacturing laboratories who have made a killing,” explained ANDOC to the newspaper, El Pais. The group added that “to a lesser degree, certain pharmaceutical companies that have collaborated out of fear or economic interest” are also benefiting from the sales.
The increased sales of the pill indicate that many women are using it as “just another contraceptive” and not as an “emergency” drug like the government claimed they would, ANDOC continued. “Likewise this reveals an ignorance that the at-home abortions caused by the pill, no matter how small the embryo, do not cease to be abortions.”
In addition, the organization warned that the lack of a required prescription has led to the disappearance of any sort of health care controls over the use of the drug. The guidelines for dispensing the pill have been blocked by the Ministry of Health, which has limited itself to publishing “a pamphlet that is more appropriate for a supermarket than for a healthcare establishment.”
“The Ministry of Health has taken a political measure and ‘sold’ it to the citizens, using demagogic and miracle-product marketing criteria,” the group concluded.