Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Plan B

This is a frustrating issue. I just wanted to point everyone who cares to read about it here.

The Plan B emergency contraceptive (the day after pill) should be out and available over the counter. Why isn't it?

Politics.

Bad times. This could prevent a lot of abortions and other unplanned pregnancies. This should be available and fast.

5 comments:

y-intercept said...

"[Plan B] could prevent a lot of abortions and other unplanned pregnancies."

I suspect that the people who are trying to block Plan B consider any act of killing an embryo to be abortion. Such people would say that you can't prevent an abortion by an abortion. Plan B could not prevent an unplanned pregnancy as the unplanned pregnancy occurred at conception. Plan B is just a way of letting a person perform the abortion without if they were pregnant or not.

If you consider that a person is pregnant after conception and that Plan B is a form of abortion, then you would conclude that widespread availability of Plan B would both increase the number of unwanted pregnancies and the number of abortions.

They people you mention aren't fools they actually have a very solid system of definitions and ethics. Plan B violates their system of ethics.

To say that Plan B prevents abortions involves a very complex juggling of terms.

Personally, I think Plan B pills should be used in cases of rape. However, I find the idea of some slime bucket trying to seduce a teenage girl based on widespread availability of Plan B to be discusting.

Anonymous said...

Plan B would terminate the pregnancy when it is just a collection of multiplying cells (in other words, no heart, nervous system, etc), vs. abortion which is usually performed when develpment of the fetus is further along, when the fetus may or may not have a beating heart.

For those that claim that they are against abortion because of the pain of death felt by the fetus, Plan B should be an alternative for them. Sadly, most "pro-life" folks are also anti-birth control and anti-sex education as well -- just look at the funding that has been cut for birth-control that previously existed, for example.

People who are against plan-B and birth control are not necessarily pro-life, but they are pro-"let's punish women for being sexual".If they were truly concerned about the loss of life they would be fighting hard for birth control and plan-B.

Anonymous said...

"Emergency contraceptive pills work exactly the same way as other birth control pills, and they do not interfere with or harm an existing pregnancy. Emergency contraception is simply a higher dose of daily birth control pills; it is not RU-486, the "abortion pill."

Plan B will prevent conception. It does not kill an embryo. This needs to be easily accessible to women because there is only a small window of time that this method would be effective. Plan B cannot be compared to abortion becasue there is not an embryo to be killed. The morning after pill will just prevent a pregnancy from occurring.

y-intercept said...

I did a little more research. Yep, it appears that the "progressive scientific" community is shifting definitions to the left. Apparently 30-50 years ago, the term "abortion" was used primarily for fertilized eggs that did not implant. People used to call the loss of a fetus a "miscarriage."

People wanted to call the surgical removal of a fetus an abortion because it did not have a social stigma.

This thing where progressive scientists want to call implantation conception so that they can say Plan B is a contraceptive is one full step to the left.

Anyway, I think you should have a link from your Plan B rant to your short story titled "Late Term Abortion. This is the story where you have conservative parents aborting a teenager for showing liberal tendencies. Personally, I think you have it wrong. Stuck in the mud conservatives are generally the ones trying to keep language from shifting. It is the modern movements (like progressives) who try to manipulate society by changing the meanings of words. I think you are projection the methods of modern progressives onto conservatives. The story, however, is also correct in that the far right shares manipulation techniques of the far left.

Anonymous said...

People tend to be Pro-life, and they also seem to be against abortion. Now lets say this, how many of these people adopt children?

There are plenty of unwanted children in the world, are more really needed? It does sounds like a cold thing to say, but its a simple fact.

Plan B is too effective, that is the problem, they fear that so many people will use them, they will be more likely to spread STDs.

Naturally though, STDs would be less of an issue if the government took care of health insurance, but doubtful that will ever happen.

The biggest issue about this drug and all other drugs, there is no thorough testing. There is no knowing what this will do to a person using it once a week or once a month for 10 years will do. They may be unable to have children when they want to.

I am always up for new, good things, but there will always be uncertainties. Something to think about.