Human Rights Activists Want Depo Provera Banned

depo proveraA human rights organization is demanding that Congress end all federal funding for Depo-Provera, an injectable contraceptive/abortifacient that causes serious side effects.

LifeSiteNews is reporting that a pro-abortion human rights group, The Rebecca Project, has issued a new reporting slamming the U.S. government, Planned Parenthood, USAID, and the Rockefeller Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others, for victimizing low-income and minority women by pushing them to take a dangerous drug.

The drug, which can act as an abortifacient by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg, is known for its serious side effects such as blood clots, strokes and ectopic pregnancy, but also for the loss of bone marrow density that is not reversible even after drug use is discontinued.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a “black box” warning on the drug in 2004 which states that use of the drug “may cause you to lose calcium stored in your bones. The longer you use Depo Provera, the more calcium you are likely to lose. The calcium may not return completely once you stop using Depo Provera. Loss of calcium may cause weak bones that could increase the risk that your bones might break, especially after menopause. It is not known whether your risk of developing osteoporosis may be greater if you are a teenager when you start to use Depo Provera. You should only use Depo Provera long term (more than 2 years) if other methods of birth control are not right for you.”

The drug also doubles the risk of breast cancer and increases women’s risk of contracting HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The Rebecca Project calls the wholesale promotion of Depo-Provera, which has been disproportionately directed at women of color, an “egregious . . . human tragegy” that is being driven by a “population control ideological agenda.”

“This elite institutional clique operates constructively as a de facto cartel of unethical reproductive health research funders, reproductive health advocates, and abortion rights advocates, manipulating policies to support unethical and extreme regimes of population control,” The Project writes in its “Depo-Provera: Deadly Reproductive Violence Against Women.”

It goes on to express the group’s “deep concern” that ”Depo Provera is an insidious…incarnation of a bygone eugenics era of forced sterilization.”

Pfizer, the drug’s manufacturer, rakes in $36 billion a year in sales and population-control advocates such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have donated $560 million along with other world governments who committed to raising $2.6 billion to promote the drug to third-world women.

Even though The Rebecca Project supports contraception and abortion, it is vehemently against the mass marketing of this dangerous drug to poor and minority women.

“As The Rebecca Project correctly point out, it is low income and minority women who suffer most from Depo Provera,” said Fr. Shenan J. Bouquet, president of Human Life International, to LifeSite. “And that suffering extends to families and communities which often are already lacking quality health care.”

He is calling for a complete audit of all U.S. overseas aid and an end to taxpayer funding of Depo Provera.

“I think Americans would be shocked to learn just how much of their tax dollars go towards destroying women’s health and ending unborn lives.”

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