Steve Chapman in Thursday’s Chicago Tribune Commentary assures us that Plan B, “emergency contraception,” is just a plain old contraceptive, not an abortifacient as we pro-lifers had thought.
Chapman says most Americans are leery of aborton, but are comfortable with birth control. He says the pro-life movement has opposed morning after pills as abortion-in-disguise. But, he says, it turns out that pills like Plan B just block fertilization but don’t cause abortion.
Plan B Is Abortifacient
As a long time pro-lifer himself, Chapman can understand why pro-lifers oppose morning after pills when they don’t know how they work, but now that we do, it would be a mistake to oppose them any longer. It’s time to celebrate.
Chapman got his new idea from the Government Accountability Office, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Contraceptive Research and Development Program of Eastern Virginia Medical School. These groups say there’s no certainty that these pills cause abortion.
Chapman admits there’s no way to be 100 percent sure that emergency contraception never interferes with implantation. But he says “just the possibility of an adverse event” is a poor reason to reject its use.
Not so. Where human life is concerned, the benefit of the doubt must always favor life. Would Chapman himself be willing to ingest a pill that wasn’t one-hundred percent safe—even if there was only a slight chance that it would kill him?
In the packages these pills come in is information on how they function. One function is to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. That’s abortion. The manufacturers know what their product does.
Plan B Bad for Other Reasons Too
But even if these contraceptives were not abortifacient, their use encourages promiscuity, gives a false sense of security, does not prevent venereal diseases like AIDS, chlamydia, genital herpes, genital warts, gonorrhea, hepatitis B, and syphilis. A healthy woman takes the pill to make her sick, so she can’t conceive, and the product she takes is fraught with physical dangers like blood clots, strokes, heart attacks and breast cancer, not to mention lesser discomforts such as nausea, bleeding, high blood pressure, tumor growth and skin spotting.
Contraceptives make a mockery of reproduction. They are intrinsically immoral, and were were condemned by all Christian denominations up to1930, and are still condemned by the Catholic Church. Contraception violates the natural law as well as the diving positive law.
There is a psychological price women pay for becom;ing more of an object than a valued human person. The moral damages caused by contraception is incalculable in that its intended purpose is to prevent God’s gift of life from being passed on, in effect ordering God out of one’s life.
For the first century-and-a-half in America, every state outlawed contraception, early legislatures knowing what we have forgotten, that contraception breeds a weak, disorderly society that engenders pandemics of venereal disease, promiscuity, adultery, broken families, divorce, fatherless homes and crime. In addition, easy over-the-counter contraceptives eliminate clinic screening that might detect health factors, fail to warn heavy smokers of the added danger, and prevent disease detection.
These are a few reasons to reject Plan B and all contraceptives, and that make it clear that pro-lifers are a long way from breaking out the champagne to celebrate.
Polls Reveals Lay Confusion
Once more we read that a poll taken among American Roman Catholics says three-fourths of them believe they’re in good standing with the Church even if they don’t attend Mass weekly or obey the Church’s ban on artificial contraception.
Sixty-one percent want the Church to have a married clergy, 81 percent believe clergy who left the priesthood to marry should be allowed to return to the active priesthood, and 61 percent want women’s ordaination. Where do they find these guys?
