House Bill 596, filed April 2 and referred on Thursday to the House Committee on Health, also wouldn’t require N.C. sexual education curriculums to be examined by experts in the field — instead allowing school districts to design their own programs.
Plan B, the FDA-approved contraceptive pill widely available without a prescription to women and girls as young as 15, is commonly known as the morning-after pill, and it prevents pregnancy after unprotected sex.
Rep. Chris Whitmire, R-Henderson is one of the sponsors for the bill, which alleges that Plan B causes “spontaneous abortions.”
Melissa Reed, N.C. spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Health Systems Action Fund, said Whitmire misinterprets how emergency contraceptives work.
“Mr. Whitmire clearly doesn’t understand the science,” Reed said. “It works by inhibiting fertilization, so it can’t affect pregnant women at all.”
But Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the N.C. Values Coalition, said she supports the bill’s stance that Plan B can cause fertilized eggs to spontaneously abort.
“Teaching school-aged children that these drugs are ‘contraceptives’ misleads our youth and can lead to heartache and regret when the truth is revealed to them,” Fitzgerald said.
The FDA first approved Plan B in 2009 for use without a prescription for women 17 and older and as a prescription-only option for women younger than 17. According to the FDA, Plan B will not stop pregnancy once a woman is already pregnant, and there isn’t evidence the product will harm a fetus.
