Medical dictionaries redefine "CONCEPTION" to obscure the TRUTH regarding contraceptive technologies

The redifining of "conception" by medicine in new medical dictionaries: Verbal engineering always preceeds social (and medical)engineering

There are several major print medical dictionaries, and several online versions. Apparently, under pressure from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), many of them have changed the defintion of "conception" in the last few years, proving once again that verbal engineering always preceeds social (and medical) engineering.

conception (kSn-s&p´shTn)
1. The mental process of forming an idea. 2. The onset of pregnancy marked by implantation of a fertilized ovum in the uterine wall. SEE: contraception; fertilization; implantation.
Copyright 2001 by F. A. Davis Company

conception
The onset of pregnancy, marked by implantation of the blastocyst, the formation of a viable zygote. Origin: L. Conceptio

Main Entry: con·cep·tion
Pronunciation: k&n-'sep-sh&n
Function: noun
1 a : the process of becoming pregnant involving fertilization or implantation or both b : EMBRYO, : FETUS 2 a : the capacity, function, or process of forming or understanding ideas or abstractions or their symbols b : a general idea

con·cep·tion (kn-spshn)
n.
Formation of a viable zygote by the union of the male sperm and female ovum; fertilization. The entity formed by the union of the male sperm and female ovum; an embryo or zygote. The ability to form or understand mental concepts and abstractions. Something conceived in the mind; a concept, plan, design, idea, or thought. See Synonyms at idea. Archaic. A beginning; a start. [Middle English concepcioun, from Old French conception, from Latin concepti, conceptin-, from conceptus. See concept.]

conception \Con*cep"tion\, n. [F. conception, L. conceptio, fr. concipere to conceive. See Conceive.] 1. The act of conceiving in the womb; the initiation of an embryonic animal life.[remaider of definitions deleted]

conception n 1: an abstract or general idea inferred or derived from specific instances [syn: concept, construct] [ant: misconception] 2: the act of becoming pregnant; fertilization of an ovum by a spermatozoon 3: the event that occured at the beginning of something; "from its creation the plan was doomed to failure" [syn: creation] 4: the creation of something in the mind [syn: invention, innovation, excogitation, design]

I wonder how these medical dictionaries define a tubal pregnancy, if "conception" does not occur till after implantation of a fertilized ovum in the uterine wall?

No need to wonder, really. All the latest contraceptive technologies target the baby at its most vulnerable point, i.e., before implantation but after conception (as traditionally defined.)

If "conception" is not redefined, medicine must admit that these new technologies are indeed abortifacient. Then comes the whole problem of informed consent, conscience clauses, and a refocus of pro-life activity exactly where medicine does NOT want it: At that distinct line between conception and implantation, a line already crossed by hormonal contraception, the morning after pill, Norplant, Depo-Provera, IUD's, cloning, stem cell research, and many other emerging technologies.

Here lies the future of the pro-life battle, or its failure, if none show up to do battle.

AMA Votes Against Letting Women Know "The Pill" Is Abortifacient

WASHINGTON, DC, Dec 10, 01 (LSN.ca/CWNews.com) - The American Medical Association last week voted overwhelmingly against a proposal to inform women about the potential for birth control pills to cause the abortion of an embryo by preventing implantation in the uterus.

Cybercast News Service reports that Dr. John C. Nelson, a member of the AMA's executive committee and a self-described conservative, said the Alabama doctor who put forward the proposal before the AMA "believes that in the spirit of enhancing the patient/physician relationship, that information ought to be disclosed to patients to help them make choices." Nelson said, "I couldn't agree more. That's exactly what the AMA is about. It's a cornerstone of American medicine."

However, according to Nelson, the proposal was voted down because "many people from the American Society of Reproductive Medicine... decided that they would testify, and their testimony was that there is not sufficient scientific evidence to suggest" that birth control substances can induce abortions. Walter Weber, senior litigation counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a Virginia-based public interest law firm, reacted to the vote saying, "If [pro-life women] are using a method that can operate after fertilization as well as before fertilization, and they don't know it, they are basically being deceived by lack of information into violating their own consciences."

The Family Research Council (FRC) condemned the attempt to conceal the truth from women. FRC Advisory Board Member John Diggs, MD, said Friday, "The AMA is doing a great disservice to women by refusing to fully inform them of their birth control options. Since informed consent is a basic medical ethic, it should be standard operating procedure to tell women that the birth control pill can cause an abortion. Each woman has the right to know what's good for her health and acceptable to her conscience. If the AMA has suppressed its conscience, it shouldn't draw American women into its own ethical lapses."

FRC noted that the prescribing information for Ortho Tri-Cyclen, a popular oral contraceptive, enumerates three pathways by which the pill works: suppressing ovulation, preventing fertilization, and precluding the implantation of an already fertilized egg. The third one constitutes an abortion. The third function is conspicuously excluded from information made available to patients. "If manufacturers are telling doctors that oral contraceptives can keep a new member of the human family from being nourished, why isn't that information being passed on to patients?", asked Diggs.

Nelson noted that lobbying by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine largely contributed to the AMA's decision.

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The primary mechanism of oral contraceptives is to inhibit ovulation, but this mechanism is not always operative. When breakthrough ovulation occurs, then secondary mechanisms operate to prevent clinically recognized pregnancy. These secondary mechanisms may occur either before or after fertilization. Postfertilization effects would be problematic for some patients, who may desire information about this possibility. This article evaluates the available evidence for the postfertilization effects of oral contraceptives and concludes that good evidence exists to support the hypothesis that the effectiveness of oral contraceptives depends to some degree on postfertilization effects. [in other words, early chemical abortions--proud2brc] However, there are insufficient data to quantitate the relative contribution of postfertilization effects. Despite the lack of quantitative data, the principles of informed consent suggest that patients who may object to any postfertilization loss should be made aware of this information so that they can give fully informed consent for the use of oral contraceptives.<

AFAIK this has always been the proper medical definition, as opposed to the "sperm+egg" of popular imagination.

While I have never been a med student, I always thought conception was when the sperm and egg joined. Pregnancy was defined to begin at implantation.

FYI I read an interesting article in The Economist last week that says a number of interested groups are moving towards the idea of "life" beginning at the moment of "Quickenning", ie when the mother first beings to feel the babies movements in-utero, and this has precedent in the original Christian view of when life began. Thoughts?

So that would mean that your humanity isn't based on something you are, but on whether your mother is able to feel you? I don't know that any Christian view ever held this. A human being is a human being because G-d made it so, not because another human being declared it so. You may be confusing the issue of when a woman could know she was pregnant before we had hormone-based blood tests. She could believe she was pregnant due to missed periods and morning sickness, but quickening was her proof.

Shalom.

---"unclouded by feminist, secular humanist, moral relativist subjectivity"

Absolutely! with the secular humanists being the main culprits. After all, they are the ones who got the feminazi ball rolling along and are working to instill their brand of humanism into this Nation's school children as evidenced by the following two quotes:

"Every Child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill, because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural Being, toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you teachers to make all of these sick children well by creating the international children of the future."
Taken from an address given at a childhood education seminar in 1973 by Chester M. Pierce of educational psychiatry at Harvard University on behalf of the Association for Childhood Education International.

"The battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith. ....The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new--the rotting corpse of Christianity and the new faith of Humanism."
"A Religion for a New Age," The Humanist - January/February 1983, p. 26.

With religion, and ESPECIALLY Christianity (with all the inherent tenats of morality), being systematically removed from the minds of our children, the idea that things like abortion are merely "choices" are going to be easier to swallow in the future. Given time, people will no longer even remember why abortion was against the law of the land or why.

First, here's my disclaimer: I'm a 56 years old male.

Second, here's my problem: there is no Constitutional protection for abortion on demand (no Constitutional justification for sanctioning serial killing, thanks be to the founders' wisdom), BUT there is Constitutional justification for a woman to have the absolute right to choose not to get pregnant.

Third, here's a way to section this morass for reasoning it out: the choice to not get pregnant is a moral/religious/personal thing (if we're not dealing with rape), whereas serial killing is a societal issue and as such has been neglected in address by the gelatinous spined political sloths now too much in evidence in the Republican Party, and by the moral sloths inhabiting the churches, cathedrals, synagogues and mosques in America.

Catholics will want to skin me for the following, but so be it, it is time to be truthful and allow hearts to settle where they will.

The right of privacy misapplied by the leftist/liberal SCOTUS of 1973 does exist as far as the right to reject becoming pregnant, but to extend that notion to a right for serial slaughter of new individual human beings found alive and in their normal HUMAN condition for their age is, well, un-Constitutional. It also stinks of socialist societal engineering and political teratogenicity in the judiciary too fully influenced by the democrat leftists. If anyone doubts the vital importance of whom controls the White House and Senate, consider the left-leaning judges democrats desire infesting the federal court system!

Now, if my fellow freepers who are Catholic can step outside their religious skins for a moment, it would behoove all pro-life people to consider the first necessity in this war against serialized killing of the preborn to be LAW which protects the preborn, from implantation until the individual can thrive outside of a woman's body, for this is where the division between personal right to privacy and right to a lifetime already begun at implantation must be addressed. This is not to say that the individual lifetime didn't begin at conception, prior to implantation--those who know my past posting, know I firmly defend conception as the start of every individual lifetime. This is to say that our Constitution is not actually ambiguous regarding the right to life if we will select this scientifically definable phenomenon of life support begun at implantation upon which to focus, sans religious fervor ... unless someone wants to stand on the notion that the unborn are not individual lives started while in the United States of America or the progeny of American Citizen women, this point of implantation is the natural point for establishing citizenship of the preborn. Now, let the irrational and rational flaming begin. It is high time for clarity./

You are correct that the U. S. Constitution does not protect wholesale slaughter of the unborn (no matter what the 1973 Supreme Court suddenly discovered that no one had ever seen before...)

Problem is - for most any politician or supreme court nominee to come out opposed to this fiasco would be political suicide because every leftist organization from the ACLU to the NEA would fund and campaign for their opponents. Remember, a degenerate society is more likely to place their faith/trust in government than in some higher Being who will judge them on their actions at some point in time....

PS - how's the book coming??

I believe the AMA wants a political burqua on this because they do not want to be sued. Indeed, imagine this, a person who can use the pill but not abortion by belief would have been lied to by the pill industry about the effects of the pill and could sue. I am wondering what attorneys think about the validity of the argument of the AMA that is purely subjective axiom of life and non-medical.

There is a religious rational against abortion as well as a secular one.

Indeed the equal rights doctrine would mean that a feotus should not be the concern solely of the doctor and the mother, but of a court of law allowing the condemnation. After all justice is for those who cannot justify themselves, and the fetus is very much involved and in need of justice more than any other human creature.

Even a true socialist should be against abortion because social justice implies sharing of the pain and glorification of welfare life through umbilical chord.

A third argument should be the one of doctors as per Hypocrates' oath. One does not heal by killing, for how can cures even begin to be researched? If a woman is suffering from the medical and social implications of pregnancy, then a cure for those problems should be sought for sake of advancing medicine and social administrative solutions.

That is why I believe that those for abortion are closer to the extreme right's pragmatism than anything else IMHO.

"I'm not sure if you're just arguing semantics here, or if you really believe that an egg doesn't become fertilized. If an egg combines with a sperm, this is called fertilization. When this happens, it is a "fertilized egg"."

"It" is a unicellular embryonic human. There is no more egg.

When Do Human Beings Begin? "Scientific" Myths and Scientific Facts Also, note O'Rahilly's statement that the use of terms such as "ovum" and "egg" — which would include the term "fertilized egg" — is scientifically incorrect, has no objective correlate in reality, and is therefore very misleading — especially in these present discussions. Thus these terms themselves would qualify as "scientific" myths. The commonly used term, "fertilized egg," is especially very misleading, since there is really no longer an egg (or oocyte) once fertilization has begun. What is being called a "fertilized egg" is not an egg of any sort; it is a human being.

I'll let you know what they're pushing in med school in the upcoming year. You're right about the move to define conception as implantation as being nothing more but a means of defining away pre-implantation abortion. Pretty soon they'll define "viable" as whatever happens to make it out of the womb alive--oops, looks as though they're already doing that. Rather, it doesn't make any difference that, pre- or post-implantation the blastocyst/embryo/fetus, is viable since they'll kill it with impunity anyway. It does give them a way of telling a woman who is balking for moral reasons that "Hey, see what it says here? This just prevents conception and you've already said you don't oppose conception."

Implantation is, at the most, only barely a stage of development, not the initiation of development, as is conception. The latter is an initiation of being (at least physically). The former is just a change (though necessary for continued development) in a state of being.

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