Originally posted by: gopunk
NO THAT IS INCORRECT. that is not what happens at all, the reason morning-after people don't want to enter the realm of abortion is because it is simply false. there is no recent medical data that supports your assertion. please do not continue to spread this mis-information.
the morning after pill works just as the regular birth control pill works, which is by delaying ovulation. what does this mean? this mean the egg does not leave the ovaries. it does not enter the fallopian tube, etc, where sperm can get to it. this is why the egg never gets fertilized, and thus how the woman does not get pregnant.
http://www.drdrew.com/Topics/article.asp?id=1279
It turns out that the morning after pill -- or emergency contraception -- works exactly the same way as the daily birth control pill. There is really no difference whatsoever. The morning after pill is basically a double dosage of contraception used within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse. The daily contraceptive pill that many women take suppresses an egg from being released by an ovary. Hence, there can never be fertilization. However, there is a small risk that an ovulation could occur, and if it does, there is also a small risk that the pill could impede implantation of that fertilized egg.
For reasons I cannot understand, activists have chosen to attack the morning after pill form of contraception, believing that its primary mechanism is impairing implantation of a fertilized egg. This cannot be further from the truth.
If people wanted to attack emergency contraception based on its scientific mechanism of action, in order to be philosophically consistent they would also have to work to eliminate all forms of the pill and a couple of anti-inflammatory drugs -- Vioxx and Celebrex -- which also tend to have some effect on implantation.
in summary,
morning-after pill does not work through abortion, in any sense of the word
Please read your own quote above where is says " there is also a small risk that the pill could impede implantation of that fertilized egg"...it also can force a period, which is the shedding of the lining of the uterus. Dr Drew is writing that link towards the anti-abortionists. I do not think it's abortion.
All a birth control does is fool the body into thinking it's pregnant and no more eggs get released....some doctors are even suppressing the period and having good results with healthy women who have not had a period at all in several months/few years (this is very interesting)...however as the article says fertilization could still take place and as such that
fertilized egg will not attach and will be passed out the body. The sort of definition of an embryo is a being, in which, is a fertilized egg and also attached to the uterus. However, things like ectopic pregnancies occur so it's just a naming convention and this is a nice clean loophole as a fertilized egg technically is not an embryo and a fetus has to start as one...so no harm no foul...but again when it gets down to the nitty gritty that fertilized egg really no different, however that is the line they drew. Now if the egg hasn't been released then it won't be until the next cycle....or possibly early/late as hormones could upset the balance (sometimes even permanently which is rare).
This is simple biology...Dr. Drew is writing to the layman and sort of sugar-coating the chance that yes, it is possible to be technically pregnant for at least 72 hours (minus the sperm's travel) during that time. It doesn't really matter to me, but they are trying hard to play that fact down. No doctor will say that the "morning after pill" is impossible to terminate a fertilized egg and neither does Dr. Drew. The whole 72 hours thing is for that reason more than anything else....should more than 72 hours pass, the morning after pill may still work if it causes a period or some other effect that terminates the fertilized egg...however more development has happened and it goes into a real gray area. As long as the fertilized egg has not attached it's sort of outside the law as is the case when it's only potentially 72 hours old.
Now RU486 is different...it's really a first trimester drug, but this could cause a termination much later (how far has really yet to be determined and they want to keep this as a first trimester option).
Other meds, such as anti-cancer, hormonal/steroidal, etc, are again sort of a loop hole...it goes down usually as "I think I have cancer we better treat it right away while we await the tests"...no more pregnancy and oh, no more cancer....yet again I am not against that method at all, I am totally pro-choice in that aspect and I don't define it as murder until the fetus is potentially viable.
However, if it were up to me let's do this....allow a pro-life tax, you can pay it and it will provide for the immediate removal of the fetus and placed into an incubator/hospital care. That way the mother has her rights and the fetus has theirs and taking away either's rights is wrong whether or not it kills....I don't think a majority of the pro-lifers would like to pay for their beliefs, but that is a different debate.
Anti-abortionists distort a lot of the biology and to the layman it's believeable.
For instance: The whole "stoppings a beating heart" campaign....well yes it would, but the heart in a fetus only sort of performs the same function and it actually isn't fully developed until birth and prior to that it's not the same heart function an infant has.
The lungs also, sure the fetus appears to be breathing...but no aveoli are there until the 7th month....and actually take a few years after birth to be fully functioned. This is one of the reasons premmies go blind...they can't 'breathe' so they are 'bathed' in ultra high levels of oxygen and as a result blindness results....this is how asphyxiation can also occur in people who paint too much of their skin...your skin has to breath too.
Same time period for the thinking parts of our brains...about month 7...before that it's instinct and reflex only...but yes there is a period of time in the womb where the fetus is thinking of what they don't know, but the 'patterns' are the same, so thought of some sort is happening this however, is during the last two months...
Now all that said, there is a good argument so what if it's not 'pain' or 'aware' of it's impending death, is it right to kill a paralyzed man? is it right to kill a 'total vegetable' (for lack of a better term)? I don't know if it's right or not..but I say let them live on there own and if they are viable they will survive. If we say you cannot allow a relative to die, should we also require one to comb the earth for the hungry and diseased and make sure they survive? It's all about lines in the sand.
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