Finally! Morning After Pill Approved

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Since I have found myself at odds with the idea of abortion (NB: not the legality of abortion) on a non-religious basis, this comes as a fresh breeze of air for me. It's just the fact that we (the US) could have done this so much sooner that's really depressing.

Did you read the article in the original post? If I've read it correctly -- and I'm willing to accept the word of a Bioethics director of U. Penn over that of most others -- then it's not abortion insofar as that you're killing a genetically distinct individual. I can naturally understand your (?) aversion to the sexualization of young people, but as far as killing goes, the pill doesn't equate to murder.

By the way, here is the bit on the pill's non-status as killing.

On a last note: I realized that one of the ads on this site is for a Pro-Life organization. Heh.

 

So abortion is murder and the pill not, according to your opinion? Abortion is termination of the life of the foetus. Fertilised egg is foetus. So? I see where your logic follows from, that you want to find it a nicer name, but it doesn't work, really.

You got things confused. That's before fertilisation, not after.

Oh yes, because they want to draw a nice line where abortion stops being murder and starts being a nicer sounding abortion, so that one can delude himself that it's all fine.

Oh yes, it's better to leave kids unsupervised and allow them to have "sexual lives" at their own leisure and their own risk and see what evolves of them, right? No. When there are no parents to bring up their children in this aspect of human life, the young ones end up in deep **** of rape, drugs, prostitution and whatever else. Or at least socially dysfunctional porn watchers dreaming about threesome and thinking cheating has a thrill to it.

Out of bedroom, out of garage, out of what? The gun shop, the booze shop, just whatever feels unconvenient at the moment. No one is forcing you to go to any church whatsoever, but there is no aspect of human life exempted from consequences of one's actions, including moral ones.

As much as you don't want misery for that child, would you also kill a born one to spare him the misery? Probably not.

 

You make it sound like every child who has sex under age results in some horrible family situation. I had sex when I was 16 and lo and behold, no unwanted children, no disgusting life, no perverted fantasies even ( yet I fail to see how someone having perverted fantasies affects anyone bar the fantasiser ).

Nobody is forcing you to have underage sex and abort a child afterwards. The morning after pill prevents egg fertalisation, it doesn't destroy the fertalised egg. It's pretty much the same as a condom in fuction, it prevents a sperm cell from reaching the egg not by removing the sperm but by holding back the egg.

Again we're down to having to determine when abortion occurs. When the egg has been fertalised and said fertalised egg is destroyed? Or when sperm has entered the vaginal cavity and something is done to prevent said sperm from reaching an egg? How about when a man ejeculates and the sperm has no chance of even getting near a vaginal cavity... is THAT abortion? Let's take it one step further, a man has his testicles destroyed... is that 'mass-dabortion'? (oh! the wit...)

 

A spermcell dropped in a tissue, through the showerdrain, or on a sunny beach did not fertilize an egg yet. And so it can't be concidered termination of a foetus aka abortion.
A fertilized egg is a new created life. A spermcell and egg apart is not.
If that was true, than a million spermcells would be killed vs. 1 that fertilizes the egg. Also every egg that would not be fertilized would be considered killed. That's at least 1 egg a month times half the world's females.

The interesting part for me here is that a Morning After pill prevents both the fertilized and not-fertilized egg from reaching the uterus (Sidenote: I wanted to put 'uvula' there, all those words sound the same... ).

IIRC, the cylinder I was talking about earlier breaks down the egg cell or something or prevents it from being created without nasty side-effects.

/edit: Some spelling

[ August 25, 2006, 15:55: Message edited by: Master of Nuhn ]

 

No offence, but having had sex before 16 is a pathological situation, barring those cultures where you actually can be a family head at that age, out of sheer necessity.

As for perverted fantasies, that's simple. Fantasies grow and escalate. They naturally call for fruition. As the pressure grows, the fantasiser is more likely to give in. In the end, there will be blaming books, films and games, but the true culprit is harbouring perverted urges. Apart from that, whatever affects one's sexual health affects his spouse, thus affecting the whole family and children, say, also the community in a more or less direct way.

I'm sorry but it's been said above that it also prevents a fertilised egg for lodging.

Eh, not that funny. Just read up a bit and see it's about fertilised eggs, not about spermicide or whatever. Of course, by this I'm not implying spermicide is a good thing, but just that it isn't abortion.

 

Here's another article. Of interest here is one paragraph in particular:

Now, of course, we have a debate on when pregnancy occurs. In the medical community, pregnancy is considered to begin when the egg implants in the uterus. I was also rather surprised by research that indicates that 40% of all fertilized eggs fail to implant in the uterine wall (and this does not count failure to implant from women taking some medication that is intended to prevent implantation), and therefore, no pregnancy occurs. In such cases a woman just has her period as she normally would, and most of the time doesn't even know her egg was fertilized. So from a medical opinion, since you can only have an abortion if you're already pregnant, Plan B prevents and does not terminate a pregnancy. A subtle difference to some, admittedly.

See, I don't buy that, because it's being sold over-the-counter. OTC medication is routinely sold to minors. You don't have to be 18 to go into a drug store and purchase asprin or allergy medication, so if it's OTC, why the restriction?

 

Two words for you, BTA: free clinic. Kids under 18 can already get the pill just by going to a free clinic, so I don't imagine it'd be much of a step to start giving these things out too.

 

This link from the BBChighlights the fact that in the UK it appears that little effect on the number of abortions has been achieved in the past five years despite the availability of the emergency or morning-after pill.

As far as the topic goes regarding the over/under 18 question I think it's relevant to relate this to the age of consent. If you're old enough to have sex legally, then all legal methods of contraception should also be available to you imo.

So, do you have to be 18 to have sex legally in the US?

 

Meh...My girlfriend was always able to get these over the counter here in India...so I dunno not a big deal.

 

the pill dosn't terminate pregnency at all. it causes a forced menstrubation, wich will occuor weather your pregnant or not. so all it does to be strict, is release the womans egg and set forth the menstruation.

Oh and weather a woman should have a child or not is up to one person. the woman herself.
Forcing a woman to have children without her wanting to, is just as old as killing unwanted children. and reculating your life with a book writen over 2000 years ago is modern?

and for the record, i dont consider Abortion murder, for in at that point the child is not even self-aware and thereby not a person.

[ November 02, 2006, 07:30: Message edited by: Equester ]

 

Just to nit-pick, it's menstruation.


And technically YES, even without this MA pill, some women naturally menstruate a fertilized egg. So, by this reasoning saying that removing a fertilized egg from the womb is ABORTION, evil, sinful and wrongwrongwrong, I guess every woman that has ever done this - through no conscious act or choice of her own - should be cast as a murderer?

Or maybe even The Grand Architect gets to go to jail and burn in aitch-eee-double-hockey-sticks for that design flaw?

 

Only married people...:wink:

 

To the best of my knowledge, no. That is, I don't believe their is an age requirement to having sex here in the U.S. What there are are age restrictions. For example, it is illegal for someone over 18 to have sex with someone under 18: this is considered statuatory rape because technically a minor cannot consent to have sex. Also, I believe people over the age of 16 cannot have sex with people under 16. Same reasoning behind it. Aside from that, I think anythings fair game. Two 15-year-olds could have sex, two 17-year-olds, and of course anyone between the ages of 18 and 100. Now of course this is just speaking legally. Obviously there is something wrong with age differences too great (like 18 and 70, for example).
Now concerning whether or not minors should be able to get the morning after pill without a perscription (and thus without telling their parents): consider the following hypothetical situation. A 17-year old girl has sex with her boyfriend, despite her parents wishes. The sex is unprotected. Take into account that her parents are very strict, and if she were to tell them she is wuite possibly pregnent, they would not only punish her harshly (say a beating) but also refuse to let her take the pill or abort. So she would carry the baby to term, and live a life of chagrin among her parents, because she would be unable to support herself and her child indipendently of her parents, and her child would be a constant reminder of her disobedience and failure. Now tell me, is this a better alternative to being able to take a pill that would possibly destroy a fetelized egg, and possibly destroy an unfetelised egg?

 

Admitting that children are having sex and adressing that reality is not the same thing as encouraging it. Kids are having sex. Kids have been having sex. Kids will continue to have sex. If we remove all sex from our media, kids wll still have sex. If we take away access to birth control, kids will still have sex. If we stop educating kids about "safer" sex and teach them that abstinence is the only way, kids will still have sex. If we criminalize sex and send kids who have sex to juvenile hall, kids will still have sex. Kids are given access to birth control because they are having sex.

If you don't believe this, then I reccomend you check to see if kids have sex in Utah, who removes sex from most of their media, teaches "abstinence only", and cuts off access to birth control for their minors. Interestingly enough, kids still have sex there, unless all those teen pregnancies in Utah are actually virgin births. Ironically enough, Utah has the highest underage virgin birth rate in the country......clear evidence of how extraordinarilly successful "abstinence only" education can be.

 

Interesting, according to satistical probability, the new Messiah will be born in none-other than Utah, USA.

Virgin birth rate... what utter bollocks. Did she trip, fall and land in a puddle of semen or something?

 

Well, it depends on what you're talking about here. The problem is that age restrictions on consent are state laws, and so there is a great deal of variablility from one state to the next. That having been said, there are some general rules that are present in all states.

Here's some examples:

1. Obviously, if both people are 18 or older, it's legal.
2. If one of the people are under 13, it's never legal, because you cannot legally consent to sex prior to that age.
3. If both people are under 13, technically, it's illegally for both of them, but this is not a crime that you ever see prosecuted.

So, there is a gray area here, for people between the ages of 13-17. Most states do not place a strict cutoff date of 18-years old, because that's pretty silly. You could get situations where a 16-year old and a 17-year old could legally have sex, and then a year later it becomes illegal because one of them turned 18. As a result, most states have what are generically called "Romeo and Juliet" laws that define what is a what isn't legal.

Like I said, there's no hard and fast rules here, but the general rule of thumb that is implemented in most states is it is OK if one or both members are between the ages of 13-17 provided they are within 3 years of age of each other. Therefore, it's perfectly OK for a 20-year old to have sex with a 17-year old, but it's definitely not OK for a 20-year old to have sex with a 14-year old.

 

That was really just my snide way of pointing out that Utah has the highest teen birth rate in the USA. No one actually thinks they are virgin births......I was just being sarcastic.