UCF Future Allows Emergency Contraception to be Likened to Abortion! TAKE ACTION NOW!

We need you to respond to an extremely skewed and inaccurate article printed this week in the UCF Future about Emergency Contraception.

The article consulted the campus’s Right to Life group, which argued that EC is the equivalent of an abortion, and excluded the views of NOW Orlando and VOX UCF. This article allowed mythology, religious extremism and stigmas to dominate an important conversation that students need to be having about birth control and sexuality. By printing this article without medically accurate information about Emergency Contraception, the UCF Future has contributed to the war on women and the war on birth control. We must stand together to defend the students of UCF from this type of mis-information.

Please read the article below, and take a moment to write an email to the Managing Editor, Kate Howell. After you’re done, send us the email and we’ll post a few on the noworlando.org site.

Emergency contraceptive available at UCF for $24 Decision to sell pill
prompts students to consider its morality

The Health Center’s decision to make the emergency contraception pill, also known as the morning-after pill, available to the UCF community has sparked some debate among students.

Beth Burwell, president of the Students for Life Club at UCF, said she is disappointed with the university’s decision to provide ECP to students. “Many women may not realize that they are aborting a child,” Burwell said. “Although ECP is designed to prevent fertilization, it has a second effect of preventing the newly conceived child from implanting in the womb, thus causing a miscarriage for the tiny growing baby.”

Kristin Harnish, a graduating senior, is also concerned about the university’s choice to distribute ECP to students. “I think it promotes promiscuity, and presents an easy way out for students who might have made a better choice,” Harnish said. “Life begins at conception. Emergency contraception allows a student to choose to get rid of the baby, without facing the moral dilemma.”

Many people think of a newly conceived child as just a cell, Burwell added. She said, that while it may be one cell at the moment of conception, within hours there are 500 more cells that rapidly duplicate into thousands more. “That’s way past the one cell phase,” she said. While university health officials do not deny that ECP may prevent a fertilized egg from implanting to the uterus wall, they stress that once implantation has occurred, ECP has no impact on the fetus.

According to Karen Yerkes of the UCF Women’s Clinic, the UCF Health Center strives to encourage students to make safe choices that could prevent disease or unintended pregnancy. However, the health center is also
committed to educating its sexually active students about all of their options. “By providing contraceptive services as part of our quality health care, we help to keep UCF students in the classroom,” Yerkes added.

Sophomore Alexis Stangl said she is pleased with the university’s effort to fully educate its students. “Everyone should be free to make their own choice,” she said. She also pointed out that students may need to use ECP because of difficult circumstances, such as rape.

Rachel Koplin, a freshman theater major, said that people have a right to believe as they choose and do whatever they want with their own bodies. She said that she believes it is the university’s job to educate its students and allow them to make their own decisions based on what they believe.

According to a national survey by the American College Health Association, birth control pills and condoms are the two most used methods of preventing pregnancy among students. However, 10.7 percent of sexually active students surveyed indicated that they or their partners had used the emergency contraception pill when other
methods failed.

“Emergency contraception pills can prevent pregnancy if used within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse,” said Michael Deichen, associate clinical director of UCF Health Services. “ECP works in the same fashion as oral contraceptive pills, Deichen said. “The hormones inhibit ovulation, but also reduce the likelihood of fertilization of the egg, and implantation of the fertilized egg into the uterus.”

According to Yerkes, the emergency contraception pill is usually effective in preventing pregnancy if used immediately. “For every 100 women who have unprotected intercourse, eight will get pregnant,” she explained. “With ECP, only one will get pregnant; a 75 percent to 85 percent reduction.”

The emergency contraception pill is available by prescription only at the UCF Health Center for $24.

Yerkes warned that ECP can have some side effects including nausea, fatigue, breast tenderness, headache, abdominal pain and dizziness. She added that these effects are usually mild and only last for a day or so.

Students who would like more information on emergency contraception can contact REACH for Wellness or UCF Health Services.

Thank you for your support.

Jenna Cawley
President, Orlando NOW

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