By BRIAN CLOWES
(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For an electronic copy of chapter 2 of The Facts of Life, “Abortifacients,” e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)
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The intrauterine device (IUD) is a foreign body inserted into the uterus. IUDs are made of a non-reactive plastic such as polyethylene, and may include active chemicals or elements such as progesterone or copper which slowly diffuse into the uterus over a period of several years.
The first modern-day IUD, the Grafenberg Ring, was placed on the market in 1915. Several other companies immediately saw the opportunity for profit, and by the mid-1930s, there was a proliferation of IUDs for sale. They sported intimidating names such as the Sterilette, the Collar Button, the Wishbone, the Silkworm Pust, and the Star. Some of the devices were of good quality, but many were made of “. . . cheaper, noncorrosive metals, or of celluloid, bakelite, and chromium plated metals rather than gold.”
According to one expert at the time, “Sometimes these [cheaper IUDs] were claimed to be made of solid gold in order to enhance the price, and a few practitioners took economic advantage of the need and ignorance of women.”
More than 70 different types of IUDs have been manufactured over the last century. Some of these have consisted of polyethylene with barium sulfate so they could be detected by X rays. The Dalkon Shield, which was withdrawn from the market in 1974 due to a number of maternal deaths, was of this type.
Other IUDs, including the Progesterone T, were loaded with varying doses of progesterone crystals that were usually suspended in silicone oil. This IUD released about 24 milligrams of progesterone a year. It was originally promoted under the truly Orwellian label “Uterine Therapeutic System.”
The copper IUDs (including the “Copper 7,” “Copper T,” and “Tatum T”) discharged from 50 to 75 micrograms of ionic copper into the uterus each day. These copper ions interfere with the life-sustaining functions that regulate implantation of the new human life in the uterus. Copper has been proven to be the active agent in these IUDs because identical devices are ineffective without the element. Each copper IUD is effective at causing early abortions for about four years.
There are three IUDs currently available on the American market. The first is the non-hormonal Copper T 380A (ParaGard), which consists of a flexible T shape containing copper collars on both arms and a copper coil along the stem, and is supposedly good for six years of sterility. The second is Mirena, which releases the progestin levonorgestrel at a rate of about 20 micrograms per day, declining to 14 micrograms per day after five years. In 2013, the Food and Drug Administration approved Bayer’s Skyla, a lower-dose levonorgestrel IUD effective for three years.
How Do IUDs Work?
IUDs prevent sperm from fertilizing ova, release ions that interfere with fertilization, thicken the cervical mucus, and inhibit sperm capabilities. These are all contraceptive effects. But IUDs also irritate the endometrium (the lining of the uterus) and make it inhospitable to the blastocyst (the very early developing human being), which is an abortifacient effect.
Nearly half a century ago, the American Medical Association recognized that “the action of the IUDs would seem to be a simple local phenomenon. That these devices prevent nidation [implantation] of an already fertilized ovum has been accepted as the most likely mechanism of action.”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concurred in this assessment, finding that “IUDs seem to interfere in some manner with the implantation of the fertilized egg in the lining of the uterine cavity. The IUD does not prevent ovulation.”
Nothing has changed. The patient information pamphlets for all of the IUDs made today describe in detail this abortifacient action. For example, the PIP for the Skyla IUD says that one of its mechanisms of action is “alteration of the endometrium.”
In summary, every IUD ever manufactured prevents implantation, meaning that they are all abortifacients. These devices ensure that the uterus is as barren and hostile to new life as a desert. In fact, this abortifacient action is so efficient that scientists recommending the IUD for “emergency contraception” note that only one in 1,100 women will remain pregnant after inserting the device from two days to two weeks after their last unprotected intercourse.
Complications
Associated With IUD Use
Until about 1960, the medical community generally condemned IUDs because of their severe side effects. Alan Guttmacher, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in 1959 that “intrauterine devices are mentioned only to be thoroughly condemned because of their ineffectiveness, their potential source for infection and irritation, as well as their carcinogenic potential.”
Although IUD technology had not advanced in the slightest, the entire medical community performed an abrupt about-face in the mid-1960s and began to accept the device. But serious complications were documented almost immediately. In 1974, the FDA summarized complaints received about the various IUDs on the market at that time.
The FDA had received reports of 238 cases of spontaneous septic abortion from women who had become pregnant with IUDs in place. Of these women, 21 died. The Dalkon Shield was involved in 14 of these deaths and 209 cases of septic abortion, and the Lippes Loop caused 5 deaths and 21 septic abortions. Overall, there were about 15,000 IUD related hospitalizations annually in the early 1970s.
A.H. Robin Pharmaceuticals made the Dalkon Shield IUD from 1971 to 1974. Documented reports of severe injuries began to surface almost immediately after initial distribution, and on June 29, 1975, the FDA announced it intended to “…require special warning notices for users of the intrauterine devices, the contraceptives that were linked to 43 deaths in recent years.” A.H. Robin pulled the Dalkon Shield from the market in 1975. By 1985, 13,000 women had sued the company for damages relating to sterility, miscarriages, and pelvic infections.
Incredibly, some population controllers, including Stephen Mumford and Elton Kessel — who peddle the dangerous sterilizing chemical quinacrine in developing countries — have tried to sanitize the image of the Dalkon Shield so that it can make a comeback.
Ortho Pharmaceuticals withdrew its Lippes Loop from the American market in 1985, and G.D. Searle withdrew its Copper 7 and Tatum T IUDs in 1986 when its liability insurance lapsed. Searle also faced 775 lawsuits from women who suffered injuries from their IUDs or who conceived babies with birth defects when the devices did not work properly.
Because of widespread negative publicity, only one percent of women using birth control were on the IUD by 1995, but this number had risen to about eight percent by 2012.
According to their patient information pamphlets, complications associated with the IUDs in current use include sterility, hemorrhage, perforation of the uterus, colon, bladder, or small or large intestine, cervical lacerations, cervical dysplasia (developmental abnormalities), deep embedding of the IUD (a serious problem in developing countries, where women may have had the devices in their uteri for a decade or more), fragmentation of the IUD, development of hydatidiform moles, salpingitis (inflammation of the uterine tubes), and pelvic inflammatory disease (PID, which often leads to infertility or sterility).
The IUD And
“Contraceptive Imperialism”
IUDs have confronted the anti-fertility industry with a number of forbidding problems, the greatest of which was the proven danger of the devices. This did not stop the IUD manufacturers from turning a tidy profit by dumping their products on the poor women of developing countries.
Despite being faced with an avalanche of lawsuits claiming damage from its Copper 7 and Tatum T IUDs, Searle said that it would continue to make IUDs for women in developing countries under population control programs funded by the United States and other Western countries.
This is yet another example of the West’s “contraceptive imperialism” — a willingness to dump unsafe and even lethal products on poor women of the developing world after judging them to be too risky for Western women.
Health risks associated with IUDs are a serious matter with grave implications that are not immediately evident. Women normally lose an average of 35 to 40 cubic centimeters (cc) of blood during their menstrual period, but women using a loop IUD lose about twice as much blood. This shows that IUDs are especially ill suited for use in developing countries, where anemia and malnutrition are often endemic, especially among women and children.
Naturally, long-acting birth control that women cannot control is ideal for use by coercive governments. Nearly half of all Chinese women of childbearing age have IUDs implanted after their first birth because the only alternative the government gives them is immediate sterilization.
The IUD is the perfect example of nature’s lack of tolerance for abuse. The very idea of having a piece of plastic or metal inserted into the body in order to cripple a healthy reproductive system should be repugnant to women, but the anti-life mentality has advanced so far that millions of women are willing to risk the consequences.
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