----Now Available: Middle Ground on Abortion----
The middle ground on abortion: They'll only suck out HALF the kid's brains, enabling him or her to register Democrat (and maybe write the occasional column for Newsweek) upon reaching adulthood.
-Dan
Posted on 07/09/2005 11:59:31 PM PDT by Crackingham
In theory, access to the drug called Plan B should be a no-brainer. It's safe, it's effective, it's easily available in dozens of countries. But Plan B is a drug used to prevent pregnancy, and nothing about preventing pregnancy in America is simple, except for the fact that so many women do it as a matter of course.
Plan B is an emergency contraceptive that works by inhibiting ovulation, fertilization or implantation. It won't work if you're already pregnant, but it will stop you from becoming pregnant if your everyday contraceptive failed or you've had unprotected sex. But because it must be taken within a few days—it's sometimes called the morning-after pill—it's important to have ready access. Canada, Britain, France and a host of other countries allow women to get emergency contraception without a prescription. It's even distributed at public clinics in Peru, where abortion is largely illegal—and an estimated 400,000 illegal abortions are performed annually.
More than a year ago, an advisory panel at the Food and Drug Administration voted 23-4 to allow Plan B to be sold over the counter in the United States. In a highly unusual move, the agency rejected the panel's recommendation. In an even more unusual move, federal guidelines sent to hospitals earlier this year on the treatment of rape victims did not mention Plan B, although one study suggests that the vast majority of women who become pregnant through sexual assault can avoid it by taking the drug.
In a smart and provocative new book titled "Marriage, a History," social scientist Stephanie Coontz quantifies what most of us know: "The relations between men and women have changed more in the past thirty years than they did in the previous three thousand."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
The middle ground on abortion: They'll only suck out HALF the kid's brains, enabling him or her to register Democrat (and maybe write the occasional column for Newsweek) upon reaching adulthood.
-Dan
Well, not exactly. Some contraception can be abortifacient.
If you consider preventing a fertilized single cell from implanting in the uterine wall (which is a small possibility with all birth control pills, and morning-after pills are just birth control pills) an abortion, something you have precisely 0% chance of convincing most of the people in the country of.
Pro life groups are pushing to ban abortion, not birth control pills. This author is shamelessly merging the issues of birth control with abortion. I can't name one group out there pushing to ban birth control pills. It's a non issue. Banning birth control pills is a non issue. And it has nothing significant to do with the pro life movement.
I just stated a fact.
I agree with you. The morning-after pill would prevent a lot of abortions, in the common-sense meaning of the term. While the pro-life absolutists consider any destruction (direct or indirect) of a fertilized egg to be an abortion, they neglect the common-sense judgment of most people that killing of a fetus that has developed into visibly human form is much worse than killing a day-old embryo.
It is common-sense morality, rather than the very abstract morality underlying pro-life absolutism, that has given the anti-abortion movement whatever political victories it has obtained. Arguing against the morning-after pill is really spiting themselves, and it does not help all the middle-term and late-term victims of abortion who represent the real tragedy and the real moral failure of their "mothers" and those who aid and abet their grim decisions.
Everything, from the moment you're conceived -the color of your eyes to the shape of your lips, how tall you can grow,- is all there in that single fertilized egg. The morning after pill prevents conception. It takes the sperm at least 2 days to reach the egg. If you stop it before it reaches the egg, there's no problem. But as soon as that sperm hits that egg you have an entirely new an unique human being.
... they neglect the common-sense judgment of most people that killing of a fetus that has developed into visibly human form is much worse than killing a day-old embryo.Some people are just so hung up on looks.
How do you feel about killing ugly-looking embryos?
The instructions are there, yes. But there are no eyes, no lips, no "tall". And no brain for several more weeks.
You will find people on FR doing just that. There are some here opposed to any form of artificial birth control. I expect a few of them will be along shortly.
Banning birth control pills is a non issue. And it has nothing significant to do with the pro life movement.
I agree, though some people against abortion are against birth control too. The only cases I see for abortion are for rape, incest, or where the mother's life is in danger. Those depend upon circumstances. But otherwise, people need to take responsibility for their actions.
And I always thought abortion ,like pregnancy was something one either was or was not . Now we have middle
ground on abortion-does that translate into a live politician?--or merely a muddled abortion?
Which matters not a tap to the lack of morality of abortion. The fact of the matter is that conception starts a biochemical reaction that continues for the next approximately twenty years, until the specific individual reaches full physical maturity. That is a continuum that has ONE specific starting point---conception. Thus--human life starts at conception.
"Having a brain" or "brainwaves" is simply abortionistic "weasel-wording" to get around the above inconvenient facts.
I see Anna Quindlen is getting a respectful hearing on Free Republic this morning. Not surprising. Her kind have really redefined the intellectual mainstream in America today, even for self-described conservatives. I notice that Quindlen cites radical feminist Stephanie Coontz of Evergreen State College as if Commie Coontz were just a garden-variety observer of social trends. And I suppose that is what she is today, at least for those who have the moral integrity of Ronnie-Ron Reagan.
You've just given me an idea for a hit reality series - "Extreme Embryo Makeover", where we take ugly embryos and. . .
The morning after pill makes sense for most if not all sensible people.
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