Page 35 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 19

Leadership
Health & Healing

What are

Abortifacients?

By HLI Staff | November 17, 2021 | https://www.hli.org/

n abortifacient is de- completion of labor.” Indeed, until tion” from fertilization (union of
fined as “an agent (such the mid-1960s, scientists universally sperm and ovum) to implantation.
as a drug) that induces acknowledged that human life be- Under the new definition of “con-
Aabortion.” However, gins at the moment of fertilization ception,” if a device or drug―such
manufactures often market these of the ovum by the sperm some- as an IUD or hormonal contracep-
drugs under the name “contracep- where in the Fallopian tube. tion―prevents implantation, then no
tion” to make them more appealing abortion takes place.
to consumers. In order to make abortion-causing
methods more palatable in societies The “family planning” industry
Many Contraceptives Are that still widely rejected abortion, finally succeeded in 1965, when the
Really Abortifacients and to circumvent laws designed to American College of Obstetricians
In 1963, the United States Depart- prohibit abortion, the promoters and Gynecologists published its first
ment of Health, Education and of birth control realized that they Terminology Bulletin, stating: “Con-
Welfare shared the widely held had to blur the line between con- ception is the implantation of a
definition of abortion as “all the ception-preventing (contraceptive) fertilized ovum.” It is important to
measures which impair the viability and early abortion-causing (abor- note that this change in terminol-
of the zygote at any time between tifacient) actions. They did this by ogy was clearly not based upon
the instant of fertilization and the changing the definition of “concep- new scientific findings but was

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