During a segment on a Planned Parenthood campaign to hand out free doses of the emergency contraceptive Plan B at Colorado clinics, the December 6 broadcast of KDVR's Fox 31 Good Day Colorado uncritically reported the comments of Colorado Right to Life spokeswoman Lolita Hanks, who falsely claimed that Planned Parenthood is “handing out something that kills children.” In fact, "[i]f a fertilized egg is implanted prior to taking Plan B, Plan B will not work," according to the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) website. Moreover, as The Washington Post reported on September 6, 2005, a study published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology “suggests the treatment [Plan B] is safe for adolescents and younger women” to use.

During the Good Day Colorado segment on December 6 about Colorado Planned Parenthood's giveaway of thousands of doses of Plan B for its “Free EC Day,” Fox 31's Melissa Mollet reported:

All you have to do today is go into your local Planned Parenthood -- you can actually find that on myfoxcolorado.com -- so you go inside, you take your ID to prove that you're 18 years old, and they will give you this pack of Plan B. And typically they charge about 30 dollars for this pack, but today it's free. The pill became over-the-counter this August. Plan B is the same makeup and dosage as a previous pill that was also a prescription. It's happening today in 36 other states. Twenty-eight Planned Parenthoods here in Colorado are handing them out. The pill is costing the organization thousands of dollars. And for the first time ever, a man can come get the pill for his significant other. All he has to do is show his ID, but critics are very upset since there's no way to prove his partner's age. The last time Planned Parenthood handed out pills to women, they handed out two thousand packs in one day -- that was just back in June. Today they expect to hand out twenty-five hundred.

Good Day Colorado then uncritically aired commentary by Hanks, of Colorado Right to Life, who falsely claimed Planned Parenthood is “handing out something that kills children”:

They're not going to be asking people pointed health questions that could have consequences with this medication, as in, “I smoke.” That's a problem -- that increases your risk for blood clots. And they're handing out something that kills children. Which is flatly wrong.

Hanks' false statement that Plan B is “something that kills children” echoes a common argument by abortion opponents who portray the use of Plan B as equivalent to aborting a fetus. However, in a “Questions and Answers” page on Plan B, the FDA website states: “If a fertilized egg is implanted prior to taking Plan B, Plan B will not work.” In other words, Plan B cannot cause an abortion, according to the medical definition of “abortion.”

According to Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary defines “abortion” as “the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus.” While some opponents of Plan B argue that pregnancy begins when an egg is fertilized, that argument is contradicted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), of which the FDA is a part. HHS defines “pregnancy” in the Code of Federal Regulations as “encompass[ing] the period of time from implantation until delivery.”

As a November 2006 paper by Princeton University economics professor James Trussel and Dr. Elizabeth G. Raymond explained, “ECPs [emergency contraceptive pills] do not interrupt an established pregnancy, defined by medical authorities such as the United States Food and Drug Administration/National Institutes of Health and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as beginning with implantation. Therefore, ECPs are not abortifacient.”

However, even if one accepts the argument of Plan B's opponents that pregnancy begins at fertilization, there is still significant doubt about the likelihood that Plan B would prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. According to the FDA, there are three possible ways in which Plan B could work, the last of which some of Plan B's opponents consider abortion:

Plan B works like other birth control pills to prevent pregnancy. Plan B acts primarily by stopping the release of an egg from the ovary (ovulation). It may prevent the union of sperm and egg (fertilization). If fertilization does occur, Plan B may prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb (implantation).

At least one study, published in the December 2004 issue of the journal Contraception by reproductive physiologist Horacio B. Croxatto of the Chilean Institute for Reproductive Medicine in Santiago, Chile, has cast doubt on whether Plan B actually works by preventing implantation. A press release summarizing Croxatto's study, which was performed on female rats, monkeys, and humans noted that the study concluded that “emergency contraception using levonorgestrel [such as Plan B] works by disrupting ovulation, not by interfering with implantation.”

Referring to Croxatto's conclusion, Trussel and Raymond's November 2006 paper stated:

It is unlikely that this question can ever be unequivocally answered, and we therefore cannot conclude that ECPs never prevent pregnancy after fertilization. Even if there were an accurate test for fertilization, a finding that some fertilized eggs do not implant after ECPs are taken would not mean that ECPs can work after fertilization, since many, if not most, fertilized eggs naturally do not implant. Nevertheless, even if in some cases ECPs work by inhibiting implantation of a fertilized egg, these probably would be outnumbered by other cases where fertilization of an egg that would not have implanted naturally is prevented because ECPs inhibited ovulation.

Hanks' statement that Plan B is “something that kills children” could also have been a reference to another conservative claim -- that making Plan B widely available jeopardizes young women's health. However, as Colorado Media Matters has previously noted, while it is true that the FDA has issued prior statements that the makers of Plan B, Barr Pharmaceuticals, “did not demonstrate that Plan B could be used safely by young adolescent women for emergency contraception without the professional supervision of a licensed practitioner,” studies have found that Plan B is safe for adolescents. Further, as Fox 31 failed to note, the FDA statements about Plan B's safety concerning adolescents became the subject of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation, which found that the FDA's decision was unprecedented and that the “FDA identified no issues that would require age-related restrictions in the review of the original prescription Plan B new drug application.”

On May 27, 2004, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Society for Adolescent Medicine issued a joint letter to the FDA noting that "[t]here is adequate safety information about the use of emergency contraceptives both from Barr Research Inc.'s supplemental new drug application and data associated with long-term prescription use of these agents in the adolescent population." The letter also pointed out that "[a]pproximately one-fifth of the participants in the Barr trials were between the ages of 14-16, which represents ages below or consistent with the average age of first intercourse." On September 6, 2005, The Washington Post reported on a study published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology that “suggests the treatment is safe for adolescents and younger women.” The article quoted one of the study's co-authors, Dr. Philip Darney, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at San Francisco General Hospital, as saying, “We didn't find, with regard to health issues, that younger women were any different than older women.”

In May 2004, the FDA denied the use of Plan B for over-the-counter marketing status. The FDA's decision became the subject of a GAO investigation, which found that the FDA's decision, based on “the propensity for younger adolescents to engage in unsafe sexual behaviors because of their lack of cognitive maturity compared to older adolescents,” was unprecedented in that "[t]here are no age-related marketing restrictions for any prescription or OTC contraceptives that FDA has approved, and FDA has not required pediatric studies for them." The report also pointed out that the “FDA identified no issues that would require age-related restrictions in the review of the original prescription Plan B new drug application.”

This is not the first time Fox 31 has reported false or misleading statements about Plan B, as Colorado Media Matters has noted.

From the December 6 broadcast of KDVR Fox 31's Good Day Colorado:

STEVE KELLEY(co-anchor): 5:46 now. New this morning, getting the emergency contraception pill for free?

HEIDI HEMMAT (co-anchor): Planned Parenthood is holding its fourth “Free EC Day” today, and it's also the first time men can get the morning-after pill. Fox 31's Melissa Mollet is live at the Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood headquarters in Denver. Melissa, how does this work?

MOLLET (reporter): Well, it's a little more simple than you might imagine. All you have to do today is go into your local Planned Parenthood -- you can actually find that on myfoxcolorado.com -- so you go inside, you take your ID to prove that you're 18 years old, and they will give you this pack of Plan B. And typically they charge about 30 dollars for this pack, but today it's free. The pill became over-the-counter this August. Plan B is the same makeup and dosage as a previous pill that was also a prescription. It's happening today in 36 other states. Twenty-eight Planned Parenthoods here in Colorado are handing them out. The pill is costing the organization thousands of dollars. And for the first time ever, a man can come get the pill for his significant other. All he has to do is show his ID, but critics are very upset since there's no way to prove his partner's age. The last time Planned Parenthood handed out pills to women, they handed out two thousand packs in one day -- that was just back in June. Today they expect to hand out twenty-five hundred.

KATE HODLE (Planned Parenthood): We think we may see lines, we have in the past, but we've gotten pretty good at managing that, and it's a pretty quick process. I mean, it really is. Come in, show your ID, we'll make sure you get your Plan B, and out the door you go.

LOLITA HANKS (Colorado Right to Life): They're not going to be asking people pointed health questions that could have consequences with this medication, as in, “I smoke.” That's a problem -- that increases your risk for blood clots. And they're handing out something that kills children. Which is flatly wrong.

MOLLET: This is now over-the-counter, of course, so if you go to your average pharmacy, it's about 40 dollars there. Most clinics across the country open today from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For a link to that website again, you can go to myfoxcolorado.com.