Norplant: Better Killing Through Chemistry
CHAPTER 33 — NORPLANT: BETTER KILLING THROUGH CHEMISTRY
American Life League
It takes little imagination to see that the unborn Black baby is the real object of many abortionists. Except for the privilege of aborting herself, the Black woman and her family must fight for every other social and economic privilege ... The quality of life for the poor, Black, and the oppressed will not be served by destroying their children.
Erma Clardy Craven.[1]
Anti-Life Philosophy.
The United States has lagged far behind other nations for decades in the field of birth control. With the introduction of the safe and effective contraceptive NORPLANT, women will be able to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy for five years at a time.
No more will women have to interrupt their sexual foreplay to use clumsy barrier methods, and no longer will they become pregnant when they forget to take their birth control pills.
Unholy Dreams.
Introduction.
Abortion is a marvelously efficient weapon for the population controllers, but it has its drawbacks. It is expensive, messy, and worst of all it is being exposed as a racist institution by the very people the abortionists accuse of being prejudiced.
For decades, the popcon fanatics have dreamed about a mass means of neutering minority women that would be quick, efficient, and private. And the concept of a "safe and handy" abortifacient is certainly nothing new. A quarter-century ago, Garrett Hardin and other population theorists fantasized that the dominant "contraceptive" of the future would be an efficient abortifacient pill.[2]
It appears that the science genie has finally granted the population controller's wish. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the abortifacient "contraceptive" NORPLANT for public use on December 10, 1990.
The Power Behind the Plan.
The ominously-named Population Council (founded by population control fanatic John Rockefeller III) owns the patent for NORPLANT, which was developed by embryologist Sheldon Segal of the Rockefeller Foundation. The Population Council will reap four percent of the colossal profits that will accrue from the use of the drug. The abortifacient is produced by Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories of Philadelphia, a subsidiary of American Home Products, and will cost women about $500 to produce about five years of barrenness.[3]
The Nuts and Bolts of NORPLANT.
Implantation and Extraction Procedure.
The NORPLANT carrier consists of six small tubes about the size of matchsticks. These tubes are made of silastic (silicone rubber), the same material used in heart valves and medical tubing.
The insertion procedure is performed by a clinician, who makes a 1/8-inch incision about six inches above the woman's elbow. The capsules are then loaded one by one into her arm in a fan-shaped pattern using an insertion tube.[3] Local anesthetic is used for both the implantation and extraction procedures.
The removal of the six tubes will be tricker than implantation in many cases, because they become coated with fibrous tissue and gradually anchor into the surrounding tissue. This is a result of trauma caused by the implants being pushed into the tissue and a low-scale inflammatory reaction to the tube's foreign substance.
Mechanism of Action.
Once implanted, the six NORPLANT carrier capsules slowly release the drug levonorgestrel (low-dosage progestin), an abortifacient that prevents implantation of the developing human being (blastocyst) in the uterus.
The initial rate of progestin release is 100 micrograms per day. This rate gradually declines to 30 micrograms per day after 27 months, and then levels out.[4]
One major study showed that NORPLANT may reduce but not inhibit sperm migration by thickening cervical mucus, thus allowing fertilization to take place.[5] Another test of 41 women using NORPLANT for a period of one year showed that 24 women experienced a suppressed uterine lining, 12 had an irregular uterine lining, and only five had normal (unchanged) uterine linings.[4] Thus, NORPLANT had a clearly abortifacient effect in 70 percent of the women tested.
This means that a woman being used by NORPLANT will continue to ovulate, and will therefore be blissfully unaware that she is aborting at least once or twice each year.
NORPLANT is a member of the single-synthetic hormone class of abortifacients that include the 'mini-pill' and the Progestasert intra-uterine device (IUD).[5] These other abortifacients are described in Chapters 31 and 32.
The manufacturers claim that the effectiveness rate of NORPLANT is 99.2 percent per year for women under 154 pounds and 98.3 percent per year for women over 154 pounds.
NORPLANT Side Effects.
Introduction.
There is no question that NORPLANT users will experience a galaxy of side effects ranging from the trivial to the extremely serious. These impacts occur primarily in the first nine months of use, when the level of hormone release from the capsules is highest, and when the woman's body is being acclimatized to the drug.
According to Dr. John Hildebrand, the synthetic hormone in NORPLANT "... louses up the lining of the uterus. It produces exhaustion of the endometrium, depriving the lining of the uterus of the hormonal support that it needs. [The drug] disturbs all factors in the blood system. The drug is long-acting because the body can't digest these new analogs. The body sees this as an abnormal thing and tries to get rid of it. When it can't, it sets up violent reactions inside us. In the sense that we are all different that our enzymes are as individual as our fingerprints nobody can be certain of the effects this drug will have."[3]
The Impacts.
Although they naturally vary widely from woman to woman, the range of typical NORPLANT side effects generally include;[3]
• changes in the endometrium (uterine lining);
• odd menstrual bleeding patterns;
• spotting between periods;
• missed or prolonged periods;
• dizziness;
• thrombosis;
• liver dysfunction;
• headaches;
• sudden weight gain or loss;
• ectopic pregnancy;
• nervousness;
• nausea;
• breast pain;
• increased hair loss or gain;
• abnormal body hair growth;
• high blood pressure;
• arm numbness;
• allergic/immune reactions;
• 'migration' of the six polymer capsules; and, ironically,
• a decreased sex drive.
One study conducted in Singapore concluded that after one year of use, women "... may have an increased predisposition to thrombosis as evidenced by significant increase in platelet count and aggregability." The results also show that NORPLANT acceptors may have an enhanced potential for hypercoagulation ... "[6]
Another study showed that there was a significant increase (58%) in bilirubin in women who used NORPLANT for a year, indicating that the abortifacient may cause serious liver dysfunction.[7]
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned that NORPLANT "... should not be used by women who have acute liver disease, unexplained vaginal bleeding, breast cancer, or blood clots in the legs, lungs, or eyes."
The Propaganda Machine Gears Up.
Groups that were already deeply involved in abortion, contraception, and population control predictably downplayed the side effects of the drug in their literature. The April 1990 issue of the International Planned Parenthood Federation newsletter Medical Bulletin stated that NORPLANT's most serious side effects were weight gain and a "... greater risk that the pregnancy will be ectopic than if the user were not using NORPLANT." The article failed to mention impacts such as allergic/immune reactions or 'migration' of the six polymer capsules.
The Dark Side of the Force.
First South Africa, and Now ...
Many people, including Law Professor Charles Rice of Notre Dame university, see a dark side to the great convenience of NORPLANT.
Certain countries, including South Africa, have made the injectable abortifacient Depo-Provera mandatory for teenaged schoolgirls, female prisoners, welfare recipients, and the mentally handicapped. And now, radical thinkers are tentatively suggesting that NORPLANT be made mandatory in certain cases for women in the United States (for more information on how the United States ships dangerous birth-control devices overseas in great quantities, see Chapter 131 in Volume III, "Overpopulation").
Oops!
With so many influential people pushing abortion and birth control on poor minority women, it is inevitable that the secret racist agenda will slip out occasionally. Strangely, these stories seem to have little effect on the blissfully unaware public. Typically, those pro-abortion groups that claim to be fighting for the rights of minorities ignore them entirely.
In a classic recent example, deputy editorial page editor Donald Kimelman of the Philadelphia Enquirer stated in a December 12, 1990 article, chillingly entitled "Can Contraception Reduce the Underclass?," that "As we read these two stories [about NORPLANT and Black poverty], we asked ourselves: Dare we mention them in the same breath? To do so might be considered deplorably insensitive, perhaps raising the specter of eugenics. But it would be worse to avoid drawing the logical conclusion that foolproof contraception could be invaluable in breaking the cycle of inner city poverty one of America's greatest challenges."[8]
Kimelman went on to suggest that welfare mothers could be implanted with NORPLANT for free and perhaps receive increased welfare benefits as a reward. He apparently failed to realize that this was one of the first elements of the coercive Chinese population program that now features mandatory sterilization and forced abortions even in the ninth month of pregnancy.
Who is the Target?
We might ask ourselves this question: If Kimelman and his fellow "thinkers" were truly concerned about poverty in general, why do they not also recommend the use of NORPLANT for poor White women?
Others apparently asked this same question. Vanessa Williams, president of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, called Kimelman's article "A tacit endorsement of slow genocide."[9]
Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez sarcastically suggested on December 16th that contraception would not reduce the underclass quite so fast as "just shooting them."
The Philadelphia Enquirer publicly apologized for its racist article on the 22nd of December, after a wave of complaints. But the damage had been done; the racist thinking of the pro-abortionists and some very influential people had been exposed once again.
Getting With the Program.
Immediately after NORPLANT was introduced to the public, several judges ordered women (always poor Blacks) onto the drug because they had been convicted of the abuse of previous children. In one such case, Tulare County (California) Superior Court Judge Howard R. Broadman gave Darlene Johnson a very simple but coercive choice: Be sterilized with NORPLANT or go to jail for two to four years.[10]
Nor did it take state legislatures long to perceive the dramatic possibilities of using the drug. Kansas H.B. 2089 identified NORPLANT by name in an act that would provide assistance to female welfare recipients only if they agreed to be implanted.[11]
NORPLANT and Third World Women.
Introduction.
It is standard operating procedure (SOP) for contraceptive manufacturers and population controllers to target Third World women with new or untested abortifacient means of birth control. Additionally, the old high-dose birth control pills and various IUDs that have proven too dangerous for American women to use are shipped overseas by the tens of millions, all in the name of population control.
At the turn of the century, the sun never set on the British empire. If an empire could be defined as control of the wombs of poor women in developing countries, there is a new empire upon which the sun never sets the empire painstakingly constructed by the United States contraceptive imperialists.
"Contraceptive Imperialism."
Since the mid-1970s, the United States has been deeply committed to both domestic and foreign population control programs. Billions of dollars of our tax money have been used to implement many questionable programs, including, most notably, the Chinese forced-abortion atrocity.
The National Security Council (NSC) is the highest U.S. bureaucracy charged with the planning and direction of foreign policy. One of the most vital aspects of this policy is population control.
One highly sensitive NSC document entitled "Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests" was written in 1974 and only declassified in late 1990. This document served as the foundation for our country's anti-natalist population philosophy.
The document stated that "Commitment to population stabilization will only take place when leaders of less-developed countries (LDCs) clearly see the negative impact of unrestricted population growth and believe it is possible to deal with this question through governmental action."
It suggested that United States food assistance might be made conditional depending on the LDC's population control performance but that "... it is important in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion ... mandatory programs may be needed and that we should be considering these possibilities now."
In 1976, the Interagency Task Force on Population Policy for the Under Secretaries Committee of the NSC found that "In some cases, strong direction has involved incentives such as payment to acceptors for sterilization, or disincentives such as giving low priorities in the allocation of housing and schooling to those with larger families. Such direction is the sine-qua-non [essential essence] of an effective program."
The parallels to the U.S.-funded Chinese program (described in Chapter 50, "Forced Abortions") are obvious.
Poor Women as Guinea Pigs.
NORPLANT was the final product of 24 years of Population Council research. In 1990, The United States became the 17th country to accept it for distribution. The abortifacient has been tested continuously since 1972 on women in several developing countries by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which provided most of the $20 million in research costs.[12]
At a 1990 meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA), Dr. Shayam Thapa claimed that, although doctors were eager to implant the drug, only one-fourth of Bangladeshi women who wanted the capsules removed could find a doctor to do so.
In 1990, the Hai News, a Korean newspaper, reported that a health advocacy group in Bangladesh called UBINIG had uncovered "gross violations of medical ethics" regarding distribution of NORPLANT.[12] Korean women were not informed that the drug was experimental and were not told of any side effects. Many women were bribed to use the drug, and were instructed not to report side effects so that the test program results would be skewed to "show" lower rates of health problems. When women became too sick to avoid seeking medical attention, proper care was withheld from them.[12]
References: NORPLANT.
[1] Erma Clardy Craven, quoted in "Abortion, Poverty, and Black Genocide." T.W. Hilgers and D.J. Horan (editors). Abortion and Social Justice. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1972.
[2] Garrett Hardin. "The History and Future of Birth Control." Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Autumn 1966.
[3] Paul Likoudis. "Five-Year Birth Control Device Approved By FDA." The Wanderer, December 20, 1990, pages 3 and 12.
[4] Dale N. Robertson. "Implantable Levonorgestrel Rod Systems: In Vivo Release Rates and Clinical Effects." Also see Horacio B. Croxatto, et al. "Histopathology of the Endometrium During Continuous Use of Levonorgestrel." Both included in Gerald I. Zatuchini (editor). Long Acting Contraceptive Delivery Systems. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Pages 133 to 144 and 290 to 295, respectively.
[5] Robert A. Hatcher, et al. Contraceptive Technology: 1988-1989, 14th Revised Edition. New York: Irvington Publishers, 1988. Pages 251 and 252.
[6] O.A.C. Viegas, et al. "The Effects of NORPLANT on Clinical Chemistry in Singaporean Acceptors After 1 Year of Use: Haemostatic Changes." Contraception, September 1988, Volume 38, Number 3. Pages 313 to 323.
[7] O.A.C. Viegas, et al. "The Effects of NORPLANT on Clinical Chemistry in Singaporean Acceptors After 1 Year of Use: Metabolic Changes." Contraception, September 1988, Volume 38, Number 1. Pages 79 to 89.
[8] Don Kimelman. "Poverty and NORPLANT: Can Contraception Reduce the Underclass?" Philadelphia Enquirer, December 12, 1990.
[9] Clarence Page. "Hope Best Way to Fight Poverty." The Oregonian, December 31, 1990, page C5.
[10] Joe Bigham. "Birth Control Order Stands Until Appeal." The Oregonian, January 11, 1991, page A16.
[11] "Chemical Warfare." Communique, March 1, 1991, page 1. Publication of American Life League.
[12] Elizabeth Sobo. "NORPLANT: Lab-Tested on Third World Women." Our Sunday Visitor, February 3, 1991, pages 10 and 11.
Further Reading: NORPLANT.
Nona Aguilar. No-Pill, No-Risk Birth Control.
New York: Rawson, Wade Publishers, 1980. 235 pages; paperback, hardback. Reviewed by Edward F. Keefe in the Spring 1980 issue of the International Review of Natural Family Planning, pages 81 to 84, and by Rose Fuller on pages 177 to 179 of the Summer 1986 issue of the same publication. This book extols the virtues of natural family planning while explaining the "shocks" to the system of sterilization and the various methods of artificial contraception. A good 'theory' book.
American Society of Law & Medicine. Antiprogestin Drugs: Ethical, Legal and Medical Issues.
Proceedings from the conference at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia, December 6-7, 1991. 1992, 589 pages. Order from the American Society of Law & Medicine, 765 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215. A series of fifty papers on all aspects of use and impacts of the abortion pill RU-486 and the insertable abortifacient NORPLANT. The ethics and implementation of these drugs and of early abortion and contraception in developing nations is also covered in detail by some of the world's leading pro-abortion strategists.
Human Life International. Project Abortifacients.
June 1991, 23 pages. This summary report, updated periodically by Human Life International, lists major quotes and many major studies on the abortifacient mode of action and side effects of the most common abortifacients: The birth control pill, the intra-uterine device (IUD), NORPLANT, RU-486, and Depo-Provera. Available from Human Life International, 7845-E Airpark Road, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20879.
United States Government, Food and Drug Administration. Requirements of Laws and Regulations Enforced by the United States Food and Drug Administration.
This publication is intended to be a cross reference to the major requirements of laws and regulations administered by the FDA. This book could come in handy for pro-lifers trying to track the distribution of new IUDs, NORPLANT, and the resurgence of the use of Depo-Provera by poor women. Serial Number 017-012-00343-5, 1989, 85 pages. Order by mail from Superintendent of Documents, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402, or by telephone from (202) 783-3238.
Brian Young, J.D. "Fact Sheet: New 'Under the Skin' Abortifacient Birth Control Drug/Device Implant."
1990, 8 page booklet on NORPLANT. Order from American Life League, Post Office Box 490, Stafford, Virginia 22554. Telephone: (703) 659-4171.
© American Life League BBS — 1-703-659-7111
This is a chapter of the Pro-Life Activist's Encyclopedia, published by American Life League.
