ellaOne® in Emergency Contraception

Read the Position Paper(1)

Go to the SIPRe Position Paper SLIDES(1)

(1) updated October 2017

Italian Laws direct conscientious birth control to the safeguarding of the health of both the woman and the offspring since fertilization. This is the article 1, comma 3, of the Law 405/1975. This protection is reaffirmed also in the Law 194/1978 which, though allowing pregnancy termination in circumstances that should be exceptional, proclaims the safeguard of human life since its first beginning (beginning of human life, and not of “pregnancy” that the WHO, conventionally, considers starting with the embryo-implantation). The Law 40/2004, at last, in Assisted Reproduction Techniques (ART) procedures assures to the conceptus the same protection guaranteed to his/her parents (protection never modified in the several corrections by the Constitutional Judges).

It is consequently important to know whether the drugs used in emergency contraception (EC), Levonorgestrel (LNG, Norlevo®) and Ulipristal Acetate (UPA, ellaOne®), do or do not prevent fertilization and, consequently, are or are not compatible with Italian Laws and, still more important, with the principles on which they are grounded.