Saturday, July 26, 2008

I've aborted millions of babies

Ugh. I heard some murmurs about this at work the other day, but I dismissed them as office rumors.

How could any rational human being argue that birth control (such as the oral contraceptives that SO many women take) is synonymous with abortion?

How could our Department of Health and Human Services go againt the medically accepted definition of pregnancy and argue that conception (when an egg is fertilized) is when pregnancy begins and not implantation (when the fertilized egg/embryo/blastocyst gets hitched into the nutritious uteran lining)? [Side Notes: 1) A woman's body begins to recognize the pregnancy at implantation--not conception. 2) There is no way to test for conception. Pregnancy tests look for the hormone hCG, which is produced only after implantation. 3) The time between conception and implantation is variable, but is usually somewhere between 5 or 6 days.]

Even if people choose to personally believe that pregnancy begins at conception, why is our government trying to label birth control as abortion? Why attach that stigma to it? Why try and make women feel guilty for preventing pregnancy and scare them into believing they might be guilty of getting an abortion if they take bc? Why make it easy for more and more creepy crazy christians to legally deny women their rights?

It's already been decided that pharmisists can deny to sell women the morning after pill if doing so is against their conscience, but with this new proposal pharmistis would be legally able to refuse to fill birth control perscriptions. Here in Chicago this might not seem like such a huge problem. If one ignorant employee wouldn't fill my perscription, I have a million other options to choose from. But what about women living in small towns with only one or two pharmacies? What about those with no access to transportation and so they are not able to make it to the other side of town or the next town over? This proposal could create a real and highly problematic obstacle for women.

Accessability options aside, I wonder what something like this might mean for women who don't believe in abortion. If someone deeply believes abortion is wrong , how will they feel about taking birth control once it is deemed equivalent to abortion? How many women will worry that they have unknowingly ended their unborn childs life? Will something like this prevent young women from taking birth control?

If you are interested in reading other articles/posts about this topic, check out this and this and this. And of course feel free to sign this petition or engage in other acts of random resistance :)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

viva la resistance!! i signed the petition. i can't believe that bush administration policy ... well, i guess it doesn't surprise me _that_ much. *sigh*