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
Sorry I'm on my wine break!!
"I've got rhythm, you've got children............."
Well, no. It is not. For one thing, the intent is not to make it harder for the embryo to survive.
Mark
My rhythm method didn't work too well - kid #3.
My high school biology teacher had a joke:
Q: What do you call people who use the rhythm method?
A: Parents!
Wrong.
The most commonly recommended method is NFP (natural family planning)
To determine the window of fertility, these methods use such things as temperature, mucus, and cervical changes.The important point is that the use of artificial means of birth control is immoral.
And by keeping a fertilized egg from implanting.
Do you really expect every married couple in America to only have sex when they want a child?
Please post where I ever said I expected that.
:::crickets:::
For those who are unaware, the AMA changed the definition of conception from fertilization to implantation in the early '70s so that the pill would not be categorized as an abortifacient. The pill tends to thin the uterine lining, thus making it difficult for fertilized eggs to implant. Simply stated, the pill can act as abortifacient in addition to acting as a contraceptive.
What a stupid article. Does anyone really believe that there is any KILLING going on here. Didn't God design the system which allows non-viable embryos to be defective and non-viable?
Remarkable what fanaticism can do to the human mind.
Obviously the only moral action is to NEVER have sex at all since many, if not most, embryos never make it to birth. God is SUCH a horrible killer. geez
You asserted, "... bear in mind that "conception" is not "fertilization"." Uh, you and GS still trying to toss out this BS? Trying to dehumanize the embryos of IVF (yes, IVF conceives embryos in a petri dish, Orrin Hatchling's absurd assertion aside) to make them fair game for exploitation?
You must be kidding? There is NO "killing" going on unless it is by God.
How does anyone "kill" a fertilized egg without some deliberate step to do so? Why would anyone criticize God's reproductive methodology? If an embryo in not viable God makes sure it passes out of existence.
This article is crackpotism at its highest yet not so high that some apparently think it says something worth hearing.
Things are a lot more complicated that you imagine. But to address your key misconception here, the issue discussed in this article is mainly about the egg, not the uterine lining. An egg which has been out of the ovary for longer than the optimal time before fertilization, can often still be fertilized, but is past the point where it can form a viable embryo. Theoretically, the optimal condition of the uterine lining should be timed to match the optimal time for the egg to be fertilized, and thus overshooting one would also mean overshooting the other, but in reality that's not always the case (since there is quite a lot of individual variation in the timing of the various elements of the female reproductive cycle -- google "halachic infertility" for some detail on the effects of one common variation). But an embryo resulting from fertilization of a past-ripe egg will either not implant at all, or will stop dividing and die very early, no matter how perfect the uterine lining is.
You can babble all you like, but there is not a single IVF clinic in the English-speaking world (and precious few ob/gyn offices) where the staff would refer to "conception" in vitro. Fertilization occurs in vitro, and the hope is that after the embyro is transferred into the woman's uterus a conception will take place. Fertilization is very easy to accomplish, but conception is much more of a challenge. They are two distinct steps. Conception = becoming pregnant, and no woman becomes pregnant by something happening in a petri dish.
If these silly semantic games keep up, anti-abortion activists will next be insisting that "birth" occurs at the moment sperm meets egg. Whatever. Use whatever words you like, but you really ought to get clear on the actual biological processes, regardless of what you choose to call them.
As a good Texas Catholic, the hardest thing about the rhythmn method was, "Where the Hell do I put the band?".
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