Letters to the Editor

Misleading information

To the Editor:

I was alarmed to read the advertising supplement entitled "It's My Life," which was enclosed in The Daily Pennsylvanian yesterday. It contains a startling number of false claims about the nature of birth control pills and emergency contraception -- neither of which is an abortifacient, as the supplement adamantly claims. Neither birth control pills nor emergency contraception are capable of preventing pregnancy if the fertilized egg is already implanted in the uterine lining.

The supplement also contains misleading information concerning the postulated link between abortion and breast cancer; the National Cancer Institute has concluded that there is no evidence that having an abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. Further, a study of just fewer than 4,000 women at the Karolinska Institute Medical University of Sweden shows no link between pregnancy termination and breast cancer.

I severely question the intent of the DP in allowing such an insert to be associated with your paper. Allowing such a supplement to be distributed in the DP indicates a lack of vigilance in preventing the flow of false information through your own distribution channels.

Though I recognize that the views entrenched in the supplement do not necessarily represent those of the DP, I am disturbed by the fact that the DP is not more careful about the ad supplements they approve. The DP wrongs the Penn community in deigning to distribute this insert. The readers of the DP deserve accurate information, particularly with regard to issues which are closely tied to the crucial decisions facing today's college students.

Katherine Lee

College and Engineering '04

The need for Plan B

To the Editor:

Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan's column ("Disturbing delays in Plan B's release," DP, 02/24/04) laid out the case well as to why emergency contraception should be readily available over the counter nationally, as it is in Alaska, California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Washington (Maine's Senate passed a bill Thursday, Feb. 26, which would make EC over the counter in that state, and a spokesman reported to The Associated Press that Maine Gov. John E. Baldacci intends to sign the bill into law).

On Thursday, Feb. 26, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the so-called Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which recognizes that killing a pregnant woman is two crimes: the killing of the woman and the killing of the unborn fetus. It defines the "unborn" victim of a crime as a "member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb." A single-victim phraseology would have made it so that the death of an unborn child is a crime, in keeping with the bill as equivalent in severity to murder, but against the mother, not against the fetus.

This progression of rights recognition to the "unborn" could lead to the outlawing of abortion as well as regular "birth control" pills and the emergency contraceptives Ms. Kwak-Hefferan advocated for, which can prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus.

Thomas Foley

Wharton '04

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