EVANSTON, Illinois (LifeSiteNews) – Pro-lifers are pushing back at the news that Northwestern University is the latest academic institution to announce plans to make contraception access as simple as pushing buttons on a vending machine.
Last month, the Daily Northwestern reported that the Northwestern Associated Student Government’s Health & Wellness committee said a “reproductive vending machine” would be installed in a matter of weeks, from which students would be able to obtain Narcan, urine test strips, Plan B, condoms, tampons, and lubricant at no charge.
“Right now, if you want some type of reproductive resource, one of the only places on campus would be the Searle Center,” said committee co-chair Aryan Kalluvila, a junior. “That’s why we wanted to implement something in Norris” Underground, a centralized location on campus.
Contraception is often sold as an alternative to abortion, including by the Northwestern Center for Student Advocacy & Wellness website, which claims that emergency contraception “does not cause an abortion, but instead prevents pregnancy from occurring in the first place by delaying or stopping ovulation. EC is ineffective if pregnancy has already occurred and cannot harm an already developing fetus.”
But this week, Anna Kinskey of the pro-life campus advocacy group weDignify told The College Fix that campus officials have an obligation to be upfront about the very different reality.
“If the university is going to make these products available, it also has a responsibility to educate students truthfully about what they do and the lives that may be affected by them,” she said. “Life begins at the moment of sperm-egg fusion, before implantation. Plan B’s potential to end a developing human life is deeply concerning, especially if students aren’t aware that this is a possibility. Students should be fully informed that Plan B is not just a form of contraception, it can also end the life of a child.”
“Having Plan B in a vending machine sends a message to students that this is something you’re likely to need during your time here at Northwestern,” added Matt Yonke of the Illinois-based Pro-Life Action League. “Is that really a message we want to be sending? Stocking vending machines with Plan B instead of educating students on pregnancy prevention seems like lazy leadership on the part of the supposed adults in the room.”
In January 2023, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) under the Biden administration amended Plan B’s label to “clarify” that it is not an abortifacient. But such drugs do in fact have abortifacient potential, and whether they prevent conception or implantation depends on when they are taken relative to a woman’s cycle.
“If Plan B is taken five to two days before egg release is due to happen, the interference with the LH signal prevents a woman from releasing an egg, no fertilization happens, and no embryo is formed,” Dr. Donna Harrison of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists explains, citing numerous studies. However, if the pill is taken during the “two-day window in which embryos can form but positive pregnancy tests don’t occur,” studies indicate it “has a likely embryocidal effect in stopping pregnancy.”
Birth control and even abortifacients in school vending machines are not a new idea; several states have taken to offering abortion pills in them to college students as a way to sustain abortion-on-demand post-Roe v. Wade, regardless of the risks to the women they are supposedly serving.
But while supporters frame such policies as a simple matter of making “protection” available, critics warn that facilitating easy access to contraceptives gives tacit support to youth sexual promiscuity, exacerbating problems related to morality, teenage pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases rather than curbing them.
Moreover, conservatives have long said that much of that is by design. Planned Parenthood, for instance, is notorious for promoting ideas about underage so-called “safe sex” that are anything but, which in turn generates more demand for the abortion industry’s “services.”
Examples include Planned Parenthood’s chatbot app “Roo,” intended for teens as young as 13, that suggested there is no right age to begin sexual activity and encourages birth control while also neglecting to note that no method is 100-percent effective; PP “sex education” executive Bill Taverner, who advocated teaching children about pornography; flyers distributed to middle schoolers telling kids they don’t need parents’ permission for abortion or birth control; explicit Facebook ads apparently targeted at teenage girls; and much, much more.
