ABORTION

Catholic Citizens of Illinois ^ | 12-16-03 | Barbara Kralis

[Tennessee_Bob]

The "Baby Moses Law" is an excellent thing. However, I'm talking about the thousands out there that are available for adoption - the ones that aren't newborn, but are anywhere from a few months to several years old.

[hocndoc]

I disagree that anyone on the Pill is killing babies. I don't think there is evidence to prove that the low dose combination hormonal contraceptive pills - which result in hormonal changes that are less than those caused by the hormones produced by the corpus luteum after ovulation - cause abortions. One example is the amount of normal pregnancies on these pills.

It appears to me that the body treats an embryo the same, whether or not a woman is taking combination pills as usually prescribed.

On the other hand, the progestin-only pills slow the movement of the oocyte or embryo down the fallopian tube, resulting in 4 to 10 times the rate of ectopic pregnancies in women who are on these pills, compared to women who are on no exogenous hormones at all.

Another option is the injectible progestin, Depo-provera, that blocks ovulation for 3 or more months. The greater risk with this contraception is that a woman may not ovulate for 6 months to a year after stopping the medicine.

[hocndoc]

The topic should be whether or not to change the status of the post coital protocols.

Unfortunately, the subject is complicated, and does include whether or not an individual human life has the right not to be deliberately killed, even before implantation.

In Texas, we legally recognize that abortion is the ending of an individual human life from fertilization until birth.

[hocndoc]

Re your #116: why do you discriminate against the right to not be killed for some humans?

How do you decide which humans have the right not to be killed and which do not?

Would you fight a civil war against someone who, every day, was intentionally and electively killing thousands of those that you consider human beings?

[hocndoc]

When birthcontrol is *easier* to obtain, especially without a medical consultation, STD's and pregnancies increase.

Take a look at this editorial (in favor of postcoital birth control, and admitting that these formulations probably impair implantation)

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/326/7393/775

and these responses

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/326/7393/775

especially this one, by a Dr. Trevor Stammers, which says:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/326/7393/775#31415
"" Furthermore, without permanent change in sexual behaviour, one-off testing for chlamydia is only of limited value in controlling its spread anyway. One study (4), tested participants for the acquisition of chlamydia, TV, gonorrhoea and syphilis over three months. Around a quarter of the women acquired one or more of the four STIs even in that short time; having a partner reported as “always using a condom” made no significant difference to infection rates. In a study (5) examining the acquisition of multiple STIs (including chlamydia) by 14-19 year-old sexually-experienced girls over six months, 23% or them got a new infection and again self-reported “always” condom-use did not significantly reduce the risk.

In Holland, so often hailed as a sexual utopia, STI rates are rising alarmingly. Unplanned pregnancy rates and STIs are only falling dramatically in such countries as the USA, Zambia, Uganda and Jamaica, where sexual health education programmes focus on abstinence and fidelity; condoms are regarded as a last option for those who ignore the first two. In the UK, despite increasing evidence for their effectiveness, all abstinence programmes are still dismissed as unworkable.

Do we honestly think we are going to do better with condoms first, emergency pill second, and three-monthly urine and self-swab testing thereafter for as long as sexual behaviour remains unchanged? I don’t somehow think so. ""

[hocndoc]

You forget that many people in the past have declared that adults of the species Homo sapiens were not human because their skin color was different, or their gender or ancestry was wrong, or their political or religious beliefs were wrong.

The quality that you value is sentience. You fail to define sentience, but, let's look at the embryo of the human being and the embryo of any other species. The human embryo is the only one with a potential for that special sentience that allows you and me to have this conversation.

On what basis do you kill the life of the member of the species that has this sentience?

For that matter, how well must that individual demonstrate his sentience in order for you to believe that he or she has the right not to be killed?

In your value set, do you honor the right not to be killed of the infant who still has only potential sentience -no self awareness or memory which he can later express to us - or the adult who is similar to the infant in function or expression of the quality of sentience.

How do you discriminate against one while protecting the others?

It is safer for all humans to protect their rights because of their species, not because of their level of function or appearance or age.

[Kuksool]

{it should require that the woman buying it be 18 or older. No scared 15 year old should be able to walk into a drugstore and buy this medication as easily as she could buy aspirin!...I just would want to ensure that minors are restricted from purchasing it, and that even adult women receive counseling on the potential side effects of the drug. Hormonal contraceptives require prescriptions for VERY good reasons! It looks as if making this OTC is a done deal, but there could still be controls in place for the dispensing of this potentially-dangerous drug.}

You make good points. If pro-lifers followed your advice instead of breaking down into hysterical rants, then they could gain some political traction with the FDA and the general public. Sometimes the pro-abort's best friend is the rabid pro-lifer.

[hocndoc]

The definition of sentience varies among those who consider it a line at which society should protect the human being from being killed. To some of us, the actuality of the human species is enough - since the human species is "us." Once you open the conversation to qualification and quantification of human-ness, you put human lives at risk if the judges are wrong.

(Some even consider that the idea of inalienable rights are endowed by the Creator, not by other humans, but that's another discussion.)


Take a look at this article which defines sentience as ability to feel or experience pain:
http://www.care.org.uk/resource/pub/fs/intro.htm#15
The earliest responses to what you or I would consider pain are at 8 to 10 weeks.

Others consider sentience to be the ability to think, remember and learn. Others count the pertinent function is the ability to interact and report what one has experienced and learned. This latter would not allow sentience until at least 3 years old.

[hocndoc]

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. I've watched serial ultrasounds of a woman who was undergoing fertility treatments, and talked to many more women who were the recipients of embryos through IVF or who had low progesteron levels, and were unable to sustain a pregnancy past implantation. These women believed they were pregnant, if there was no implantation, they said the pregnancy didn't "take" or that they lost the baby.

Simply because something is not measured does not mean it did not happen. If it is difficult or impossible to measure (as first term pregnancies often were before we had blood tests or urine tests or ultrasound), does not mean that it is not real of that it does not have other consequences or effects.

The fact is that the life of the members of all sexually reproducing species begin at fertilization. Crack the egg of a bird on the Endangered Species list and you'll find that it doesn't matter that the bird embryo or fetus can't survive outside the egg. You've still broken the Endangered Species Act. The law seems able to make this distinction for birds, but unable to do so for our own children.

The IUD works usually to make an irritated, inflamed uterus wall, with increased white blood cells and altered mucus that are said to be "hostile" to sperm.

But, if there is fertilization, and the uterus is hostile to the embryo, there is an abortion.

It is wrong to create a child in an environment that is intentionally made to be poisonous to the child or to try to make the uterus poisonous in case a child is created, just as it's wrong to hire an abortionist after there is a positive pregnancy test, thus putting the child in harm's way.

[biblewonk]

How so?

How not. 486 is almost the same as BC pills which prevent conceived babies from surviving some large percentage of the time. PBA turns doctors into insame butchers and mothers into Baal worshipers or self worshipers. But you already knew all these things.

[Diamond]

My point is, though the zygote may have had the potential to become a human being, it isn't there yet.

The phrase, "the potential to become a human being" is a self-refuting notion.

"POTENTIALITIES (CAPABILITIES) ARE LIMITED TO THE KIND OF THING TO WHICH THEY BELONG. A turnip could never have the capability of reasoning, simply because its parents are never able to bestow such an ability upon their offspring. And they can't bestow it, because they don't possess it themselves. The only abilities possessed by turnips is to do turnip-things. The capability to perform uniquely human actions, such as reasoning, whether at this moment, or only years from now, demands a human subject as its possessor. If the offspring of human parentage, at any time, even in the zygote-stage, possesses the "potentiality to act as a human being," he or she is already a human being. Nothing else could possess that capability. As for the "potentiality to be a human" it would be a contradiction of terms, since the potential and the actual cannot exist simultaneously in anything."

[snip]" If being human were not to require being a person, it would be logical to ask whether a human person must be a human being. If not, what happens to the human being when personhood is attained? Does the human being continue to exist? If so, are there then two existing beings, a person and a non-person? If not, then becoming a person merely modifies the human being, perhaps as adulthood modifies the child? If no new being comes into existence at personhood, then the person is also the human being who existed before personhood. Therefore the person and the non-person would be one and the same being, which seems to involve a contradiction. The contradiction can be avoided only if the human being had always been a person, and never a non-person."

Cordially,

[conservonator]

Jeremiah 1: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have pointed you a prophet to the nations."

So you advocate killing those who God knows and formed? I thought you were a Christian.

[conservonator]

So you are against IUDs also?????

Yes. Once formed, no matter how small the person is, he or she has a right to life.

[conservonator]

Most people will never accept the equivalency of PBA and other post conception forms of BC because they have sacrificed reason for convenience.

Life begins at conception. To define the beginning of human life at another point is arbitrary and capricious.

[Diamond]

I never even mentioned what method my fiance and I intend to use for family planning and they jumped on me like fleas on a dog

You have two posts on this thread and I cannot find any "they" who jumped on you like fleas on a dog. Perhaps you are referring to a different thread.

For what it's worth, I feel that life begins at implantation.

The fact that you feel any particular way does not change the objective, observable scientific and ontological fact that each new human life begins at fertilization, not at implantation. If you read the thread you will find reasoned, irrefutable dissertation and refutation of your position. As no one has screamed "Jesus" at you on this thread and no one has been "rabid" to you on this thread you ought to retract that statement.

Cordfially,

[biblewonk]

So you advocate killing those who God knows and formed? I thought you were a Christian.

Gimme a break! Where do I say I "advocate" any kind of abortion.

[Diamond]

Kuksool, I should have included you in my #175, since you also have used the word "rabid" to describe pro-life people who disagree with you. I defy you to show the "hysterical rants" on this thread from pro-life posters.

Cordially,

[TheAngryClam]

You might want to read the actual post before you say no one has resorted to the common nutbar prolifer tactic of "JESUS!!!! What, you're not suddenly militantly pro-life? Let me try again- THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!"

[conservonator]

Gimme a break! Where do I say I "advocate" any kind of abortion.

486 is better than pba

By “better” do you mean acceptable? How can murder in any form be “better”? By not pointing out the obvious: the unjust taking of a human life at any point is murder, you give tacit approval of the act.

If I misunderstand your position, help me by stating it clearly.

[republicofdavis]

"Most people will never accept the equivalency of PBA and other post conception forms of BC because they have sacrificed reason for convenience.
Life begins at conception. To define the beginning of human life at another point is arbitrary and capricious."

I respect your opinion. I just doubt that you'll ever be able to persuade more than a very dedicated minority to your way of thinking in regards to Plan B. And the more you fight on that turf, the more you'll lose gains already made.

It seems to me that this is the perfect remedy for those who decry the excessive amount of abortions. But if you see it as exactly the same as a PBA, then I suppose the battle will continue.