Public hospitals in Ecuador have begun “routinely” giving out the so-called “morning after” pills to Ecuadorian women
Local and international media reports imply that the Health Ministry of Ecuador is backing away from the definition of pregnancy as beginning at conception.
According to media reports cited by Catholic World News, public hospitals in Ecuador have begun “routinely” giving out the so-called “morning after” pills to Ecuadorian women. Abortion is illegal in Ecuador but the report declared that “women who report that they have been raped, or that they have engaged in ‘unsafe sex,’ can obtain a prescription at public hospitals and health clinics.”
Health-care officials argue that the pill is “a new medical method of family planning.” The reports did not include any information on how the pills were supposed to help reduce disease which, after all, is meant to be the chief object of “safe sex.”
The Ministry of Health is reported to have paved the way for this policy shift by ruling that the so-called “emergency contraception” is not abortifacient. “That finding was based on testimony from family-planning advocates that the pill eliminates “the product of conception” before the fertilized ovum is implanted in the mother’s womb,” the report said. There was no information about why the health ministry had rolled back the legal protection from the moment of conception to the time of implantation.
