"Plan B" to go cross-Canada.

Ottawa--It is called "emergency contraception". The drug levonorgestrel, retailed under the name Plan B, will soon be available throughout Canada without a doctor's prescription (Health Canada release, 20 April, 2005). Until now it has been thus available only in the provinces of B.C., Saskatchewan, and Quebec.

The drug claims to "prevent pregnancy" by inhibiting an embryo from attaching to the uterine wall. It is considered 95% effective if taken within 24 hours of unprotected sex. Under federal rules, pharmacists selling the drug must offer counseling on its side-effects, such as nausea, vomiting, and STDs.

Proponents of "Plan B", such as the Canadian Medical Association, support Health Canada's action, the latter hailing it as "a significant step forward in women's rights to health." There has been no recorded comment on the effects of this drug and the hormones within it on women's future physical well-being (National Post and CBC, 20 April '05).

Catholic Church teaching is as follows:

Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them and favour the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, 'every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible' is intrinsically evil:

Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality.... The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle ... involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2370).