Hmmmmm....me thinks the researcher has an agenda, what say you?
Posted on 05/25/2006 9:24:35 AM PDT by gcruse
[The rhythm method and embryonic death J Med Ethics 2006; 32: 355-6]
The “rhythm method” may kill off more embryos than other contraceptive methods, such as coils, morning after pills, and oral contraceptives, suggests an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
The method relies on abstinence during the most fertile period of a woman’s menstrual cycle. For a woman who has regular 28 day cycles, this is around days 10 to 17 of the cycle.
It is the only method of birth control condoned by the Catholic Church, because it doesn’t interfere with conception, so allowing nature to take its course.
It is believed that the method works because it prevents conception from occurring. But says Professor Bovens, it may owe much of its success to the fact that embryos conceived on the fringes of the fertile period are less viable than those conceived towards the middle.
We don’t know how much lower embryo viability is outside this fertile period, contends Professor Bovens, but we can calculate that two to three embryos will have died every time the rhythm method results in a pregnancy.
Is it not just as callous to organise your sex life to make it harder for a fertilised egg to survive, using this method, as it is to use the coil or the morning after pill, he asks?
Professor Bovens cites Randy Alcorn, a US pro-life campaigner, who has equated global oral contraceptive use to chemical abortion that is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths of embryos, or unborn children, every year.
But says Professor Bovens: if all oral contraceptive users converted to the rhythm method, then they would be effectively causing the deaths of millions of embryos.
Similarly, regular condom users, whose choice of contraception is deemed to be 95% effective in preventing pregnancy, would “cause less embryonic deaths than the rhythm method,” he says.
“…the rhythm method may well be responsible for massive embryonic death, and the same logic that turned pro-lifers away from morning after pills, IUDs, and pill usage, should also make them nervous about the rhythm method,” he contends.
Click here to view the paper in full: http://press.psprings.co.uk/jme/june/355_me13920.pdf
"Uh, oh" placemarker.
Oh, please - why are they reaching for this?
What utter crap.
I'm starting to get the idea these days that people are on an attack the Catholic Church kick. Maybe it's just me, I dunno.
Hmmmmm....me thinks the researcher has an agenda, what say you?
Because he has nothing else?
susie
If they "may" be less viable, that is the natural order. No human intervention is altering the life cycle as it was designed to function.
Some folks have no rhythm. Or, so I've been told.
My rhythm method didn't work too well - kid #3.
Journal of Medical Ethics - wonder what their ethics are on late term abortions?
Professor Luc Bovens
Page contents > Title | Research interests | Publications
Title
Professor of Philosophy
Research interests
Editor of Economics and Philosophy
Interests: Ethical Theory, Philosophy of Economics, Philosophy of Public Policy, Rational Choice, Philosophy of Probability.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/philosophyLogicAndScientificMethod/WhosWho/staffhomepages/bovens.htm
I understand the premise and it makes sense, but women are always going to lose embryos due to such causes.
You can only do as well as you can do. Embryos will be lost all the time, as well as miscarriages of a further along fetus.
This may help Catholics abstain longer to virtually eliminate the chance of killing a fetus. Why take a chance when you are playing with a life?
However, I do believe birth control is acceptable as a non-Catholic.
It won't be truthful until Dan Brown weighs in on it ...
There, I stepped in it also ;-)
The other side of this absurd argument says "don't have sex during a period in the menstrual cycle where a fertilized egg/embryo might not implant in the uterine wall. Any sex that doesn't result in a viable embryo is bad."
THis guy never passed Critical Thinking as a freshman I bet.
Anyway ... off to the races on this one.
Parents
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