Clear Thinking About Emergency Contraception

Thinking in the United States around moral issues has become muddy. Muddy thinking is most evident in the areas of contraception and abortion. I was recently asked to write an article on the use of emergency contraception in cases of rape. In my research, I ran across many myths about contraception and abortion. This article illustrates these myths nicely.

USNews.com: Bernadine Healy, M.D.: Tyranny of the "or"

Ms. Healy opines,

We can blame the sexual revolution, women's lib, the Internet, or a society that grooves on Sex and the City for creating women's morning-after dilemma. But that will not help the individual woman waking up to a broken condom, a missed birth control pill, or a totally unplanned sexual encounter. Even abstinence has its
contraceptive failures.

There is no room in Healy's argument for sexual self-control or even self-respect. Pregnancy is like food poisoning. It is an unfortunate occasional evil that sometimes occurs as we engage in our rightful pleasurable activity - but it is not a natural consequence of the act. The problem is that pregnancy is the end purpose of sexuality. Should our response to the misuse of our sexual powers be the removal of consequences for our actions? Where else in society to we seek to remove the consequences of human irresponsibility?

But here is where Ms. Healy really gets it wrong:

But Mother Nature offers a time-sensitive reprieve--pregnancy does not occur
overnight. Medically, it requires implantation. It takes almost six days for an egg to find its way to the uterus and no less to establish a pregnancy should it meet a sperm along the way. A pulse of high-dose progestin (that's what the morning-after pill is) will in a matter of hours slow sperm down, suppress ovulation, and make the uterus hostile to egg implantation. An existing pregnancy is not harmed; a possible pregnancy is intercepted, in the nick of time.

The "medical" definition of pregnancy "requiring implantation" is an unscientific redefinition of pregnancy that opposes science and medical tradition for the sake of making emergency contraception acceptable. Fertilization actually occurs in the fallopian tube. As soon as the sperm and ovum unite, a new human being comes into existence. Emergency contraception does not "make the uterus hostile to egg implantation" since the fertilized ovum is no longer an egg - it is a developing human being. An existing pregnancy is harmed - if emergency contraception prevents implantation, it kills a new human being and ends a pregnancy.

The author finishes her muddy line of thought by proclaiming Margaret Sanger the hero of oppressed women. She makes the common claim that "Victorian morality" allowed men to have sex freely while women were enslaved to the drudgery of motherhood, or called sluts. Her solution to this double standard is not to call men to respect the dignity of women and the beauty of human sexuality - it's to allow women and men to be "sluts" without consequences! Instead of calling men and women to selfless love within marriage and parenthood, Margaret Sanger, Bernadine Healy and others of like mind call our society to let men and women use each other for selfish pleasure without consequences - and abuse and murder our children when they get in the way. Isn't that muddy thinking?

My article on the use of emergency contraception in cases of rape asks the question, "Would emergency contraception be morally acceptable in cases of rape if it were not abortifacient?" There are actually good arguments on both sides of the question, and my article promotes clear thinking more than it offers a solid answer. Check it out!

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