Vanity Fair busts Planned Parenthood in undercover NuvaRing sting
It appears Live Action isn’t the only organization nailing Planned Parenthood in undercover investigations.
Add none other than Vanity Fair to the list.
I’m late reading a 10,000 word exposé in the magazine’s January issue on the dangers of a hormonal birth control device called NuvaRing.
The article is scathing, heartbreaking, and maddening. It is hard to fathom how birth control rings could still be on the market, when the FDA concluded back in 2011 they increase the risk of blood clots, known as venous thromboembolism, by 56%, and “carry a 90% greater risk of VTE than birth-control pills with earlier forms of progestin,” according to the article. (NuvaRing uses a third generation progestin called desogestrel.) It is here Vanity Fair’s sting against Planned Parenthood comes in. From the piece:
What were young women being told by their doctors? As part of my reporting, I asked two college students to go to clinics in New York, inquire about using NuvaRing, and detail their families’ histories of heart issues.
Planned Parenthood, with its distribution centers all over the country, has been a target sales market for NuvaRing. At a clinic it operates in Brooklyn, one student mentioned to the attending nurse practitioner that she had Googled NuvaRing and was aware of the lawsuits alleging that it can cause blood clots. “I have a history of heart disease and diabetes in my family,” she said. “You yourself have a history of heart disease?” the nurse practitioner asked. “No, but my father has it. And my mother has type 2 diabetes.”
Both facts were indicators of potential problems, but the nurse practitioner did not seem to be alarmed. “Then no. NuvaRing is safe for healthy young women…. Of course, with all birth-control methods, there are side effects…. new yo [sic] You seem a good candidate. Would you like to try it?” (Planned Parenthood, asked to comment, responded that the federation “does not publicly discuss private patient matters.”)
By the direct quotes provided, it is clear the Vanity Fair investigator either audiotaped or videotaped her office visit. Plus, the author would not have relayed that conversation if she did not have corroboration.
Meanwhile, according to Planned Parenthood, NuvaRing is awesome.
One problem with NuvaRing is its potential to dispense spikes of hormones. NuvaRing has never been tested outside a temperature range of 68-77 degrees.
A lawsuit has been filed by the parents of Erika Langhart, pictured right, who died at age 24 on Thanksgiving Day 2011 of a massive pulmonary embolism. She was using the NuvaRing. Named in the lawsuit are the drug’s manufacturer, Merck, and…
… the McKesson Corporation, the largest distributor of prescription drugs in North America. According to the plaintiffs’ claim, McKesson, based in San Francisco, would have to show that its delivery systems of cargo trucks and planes had kept the NuvaRing temperature-controlled.
It would seem to me, as a “target sales market for NuvaRing,” Planned Parenthood may eventually have to answer this question as well.
And also answer for the fact it apparently isn’t properly screening candidates for NuvaRing.
On February 14, Langart’s parents condemned a $100 million dollar settlement offered by Merck on the heels of the Vanity Fair article to resolve 3,800 lawsuits. According to the agreement, 95% of plaintiffs must agree to Merck’s terms, which includes the stipulation it does not have to accept any blame.
Even if 95% agree, the remaining 5% can still sue. Langhart’s parents will be in that group. “We would rather, quite frankly, die than take blood money from Merck,” wrote Karen Langhart.
Money quote from the Vanity Fair article, by lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Hunter Shkolnik. Upon hearing an odious deposition by the original maker of NuvaRing, he told the author:
“I called my daughters and said, ‘Do not ever use any third- or fourth-generation birth control. It could kill you.’”
Here are cliff notes on the Vanity Fair article, fyi.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
This knocks me flat a woman’s magazine which actually dares to criticize Planned Parenthood and honestly describes the dangers of hormonal contraception. There is hope, after all!
Women have been scared witless of their own womanhood, so much so that they go to war with their own bodies and the children that reside in what used to be the safest place for any human person to be. Now the Controllers, the Population Controllers and Birth Controllers, have convinced women that there’s a War on Women, and the only way they can win that war is to keep killing more children in the womb.
So Planned Parenthood has been caught behaving unscrupulously. What else is new?
Nuva ring is horrible. I ended up getting pregnant while using the nuva ring. No. I did not us antibiotics and I had my obgyn put it in place each month to insure it was in properly.
Most of this whole problem comes from women thinking that they are supposed to supply sex to guys with whom no real mutual attraction is shared.
It has become a sort of casual social obligation and women have to alter themselves considerably in order to fulfill what is expected.
“Most of this whole problem comes from women thinking that they are supposed to supply sex to guys with whom no real mutual attraction is shared. ”
I think it’s more that instead of people changing the culture to accommodate women who would like a career while working with their biology (women are going to be the ones who carry the babies if they have a family, so they need extra consideration in the workplace and in school), we’ve kind of taken the cultural position of ‘tough luck girls, be like men if you wanna play with the big boys”.
It’s not right, and the answer isn’t either making contraception and abortion practically required for women who want careers but don’t want to completely give up on sexual relationships (whether they are married or not), or forcing women out of the workplace. We need a cultural shift where we acknowledge that men and women can be equal socially and economically, but we don’t have the same biology and women need some extra consideration in the workplace when it comes to child-bearing and such. I do believe in paternity leave and think it should be equal to maternity leave (men need to start stepping up, because the amount of time men spend with their children hasn’t particularly increased in a few decades while the time that women spend outside the home has dramatically increased). So, I see at least a partial solution in starting to culturally enforce that men are equal parents, not just breadwinners or providers, and that women should not have to “choose” between children and having their career.
Things like daycare provided at work, men given equal paternity leave to women as well as paid maternity leave being the norm, etc. Those sort of things I see going a long way into helping people not feel as though having a child would stop or harm their career that’s important to them. And I think men share most of the blame, not so much in regards to sex and the hook up culture (I do believe plenty of women equally partake in that, I’ve met them), but because while women have begun bringing in money to the home almost about as much as men do, men have NOT picked up half the responsibilities of childcare and housework. So women are not only spending almost as much time working as men are (it’s not quite equal, men on average work ten hours more a week than women do), but they are doing the vast majority of home responsibilities as well (men only do 20% of the housework on average, including childcare). That’s where the problem is as I see it, and it’s a huge issue. I wish that feminists would focus on things like this instead of forever pushing for more contraception and abortion, as if the band-aids are actually surgery for our problems.
But the hook up culture is also an issue, I just don’t think it’s solely perpetrated by men and women just go along with it.
“I’m late reading a 10,000 word exposé in the magazine’s January issue on the dangers of a hormonal birth control device called NuvaRing.”
I tried to tell this blog about this excellent article. I merchandise magazines to area drug and grocery stores, and this expose was one of the cover stories…. so I just had to scan it the first day it came out.
I did not realize that the reporters actually called PP to see if they would warn anyone about the danger…. I was too heartbroken over the tragic death of Erika Lanhart and the near-death and sudden end to the Olympic hopes of Megan Henry.
This problem is far more prevalent than the news silence indicates. These two were friends during college, and EMT’s immediately diagnosed Erika’s trauma was caused by her birth control.
DocKimble,
FEAR. It is fear.
I have heard young people describe becoming pregnant as a “fate worse than death” and “my life would be over” and “the worst thing to ever happen.”
And THAT is what PP propaganda has done. Terrified young women who pump their bodies full of poison out of fear.
Deluded Lib Pro-Lifer says:
But the hook up culture is also an issue, I just don’t think it’s solely perpetrated by men and women just go along with it.
Here is a recent instructional video that seeks to explain how and why contraception has shifted the dynamics of sexual behavior in our culture. It is very well done, and worth 10 minutes to watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1ifNaNABY
So, Hunter Shkolnik, Esq, lawyer for Erika´s family, called his daughters and told them not to use any third or fourth generation birth control? Did he not learn anything, anything at all, about hormonal birth control as he was handling the legal case for Erika´s family? Mr Shkolnik, ALL chemical/hormonal birth control is bad. And the mechanical things are too, for slightly different reasons. Get informed, Mr Shkolnik and the world. ANYTHING that Planned Parenthood pushes, or even just touches, is evil, that is EVIL.
Now who would stand up for women risking blood clots throughout their lungs, pulmonary emboli, strokes, cardiac arrest, and death?
PLANNED PARENTHOOD that ‘s who. It really is not important if you become physically or mentally disabled from a massive stroke or even if you die it’s more important that you have sex than anything else in the world. Sex is worth dying for—- NOT!! God help our nation, our world and the so-called leader of the free world who pronounced to PP “God bless you”.