Over 100 Women Get Pregnant After Major Birth Control Fuck Up
A packaging mistake led women across the US to believe they were protected when they weren't. Now dozens are suing the company for the cost of raising a child.
The act of taking daily birth control is annoying. I've never been one of those women who is mindful enough to set a timer and diligently take a pill at the same time everyday. Plan B is my friend.But a new case filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas outlines the situation of over 100 women who took their birth control pills exactly as directed and still became pregnant. In the majority of cases, they even gave birth. Collectively, the women have filed a mass tort lawsuit for damages from the manufacturers Endo Pharmaceuticals, Vintage Pharmaceuticals, and Pantheon Inc. How did this happen?
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On September 15, 2011, Qualitest Pharmaceuticals, a division of Endo, issued a nationwide recall of their contraceptives. The company's press release on the matter stated that a "packaging error" caused the order of the pills to be reversed. Meaning that—in the 1.4 million defective cases—the placebo pills, which are normally taken at the end of the month during the week of menstruation, were consumed at the wrong time. Qualitest Pharmaceuticals acknowledged that this manufacturing error "could leave women without adequate contraception" and advised consumers to use backup contraception. But in the instances of the 113 women from 28 different states who filed suit last week, the warnings came too late.
The lawyer representing the women told CNN that of the 113 women filing suit who took the defective birth control pills as prescribed, 94 women became pregnant and gave birth. Seventeen of the women became pregnant but did not carry their pregnancies to term. (Two women in the lawsuit did not become pregnant.) These women have been attempting to receive justice for their wrongful pregnancies for years. Immediately following the recall, a class action suit was filed against Endo Pharmaceuticals for damages in excess of $5 million for plaintiffs in the state of Georgia. Then, in 2014, two women, Angela Shepherd and Lauren Betancourt, attempted to consolidate all the related cases that had been filed across the US in the aftermath of Qualitest Pharmaceuticals's error, according to court documents. They were denied.
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Now the women are trying again in the Philadelphia court, where Endo has its US headquarters. They are suing the birth control manufacturers for failing to properly inspect the birth control pills and failing to discover the defective condition before it was distributed to retailers, among other things, according to the plaintiff's motion obtained by Broadly. Remuneration for the women depends on the state in which each plaintiff resides. Three states—New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Oregon—for example, would allow for "full recovery of damages." That includes lost wages, pain and suffering, medical expenses, and child-rearing expenses until "the age of majority." If the women are successful, they could be entitled to millions of dollars.
Becoming pregnant when you don't want to be can be horrifying, and at the very least not ideal—especially when you thought you were taking the proper precautions. But not everyone sees it that way. Since news of the lawsuit broke, people have been accusing the women involved of being overly litigious. Some have even expressed disbelief: How did they not notice the difference between the placebo and the medication? Even those who are sympathetic have brought up the issue that birth control is not 100 percent effective, even when taken correctly.In a statement to ABC News, Endo Pharmaceuticals doubled down on these concerns. "Courts have dismissed cases arising out of the recall because the plaintiff could not establish that she purchased a defective package," a representative from the company said. Endo did not respond to Broadly's request for comment; lawyers representing the women declined to comment on the case.Nevertheless, the lawyer representing the women in the case believes that sending out defective birth control—family planning medication that women rely on everyday—constitutes negligence. Indeed, Endo has a history of ignoring women's health in favor of pushing out products. Last year, the company paid out over $1.2 billion to women who suffered injuries from their transvaginal mesh used to treat incontinence; after Endo's product was implanted, in more than 30,000 cases it eroded into women's bodies and became exposed in the vagina. Since 2008, however, the FDA has warned that these serious complications are not uncommon.Ultimately, this most recent lawsuit affirms the message that women's reproductive health cannot be hastily overlooked.
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