Assumes parents are always more informed than the child. Quite clearly not the case. And time is a serious factor here.

Then FIND OUT.

There are, most likely, academic papers on the subject. Read them.

Don't sit there being ignorant trying to spin conjecture as truth.

You know, I'm a big fan of Stephen Colbert. And I finally know what "truthiness" is.

It's you guys saying "Plan B is abortion" because that statement feels true. Your gut says it's true.

It isn't. It is not fact. But it feels true. And to all-to-many people these days, "truthiness" is as good as the real thing.

How about you go away, do some research and come back with a little fact instead of more truthiness.

Or, you could just sit here and write another post about what you feel to be true. It's the easier option, and you can never show yourself to be wrong.

I don't think that's what they're saying. Imagine if you took Plan B an hour before sex. Same objection, right?

No. The Pill prevents ovulation. The egg does not get to a place where it can be fertilized. Even by the most insane definition of life, there is no new life that is ended by The Pill, except for perhaps in very rare cases where a woman ovulates anyway, and she has sex, and the egg gets fertilized, and her body is then not prepared to have a fertilized egg implanted.

It's like calling having sex on a woman's period an abortion.

Here's a diagram, since you don't seem to get this:

code:
@ <-- EGG

$ <-- SPERM



     __     __                                      

    /  \   /  \                                     

   | @@ | | @@ | <-- NO SPERM HERE IN OVARIES       

    \  /   \  /                                     

     \/     \/                                      

      \     /  <-- PHYSICAL SPACE SEPERATING EGG AND SPERM

       \   /                                        

        \ /                                         

         $  <-- NO EGG HERE                         

SPERM AND EGG NOT IN SAME PLACE. NO TOUCHING. NO FERTILIZATION. NO LIFE.

Ok, so what about with no negligence at all? If you've got enough people driving, even with no negligence, you will still have people dying. A lot of people dying. It's still not accurate to say that they are THE SAME. You could say, for instance, that "Plan B can sometimes cause a fertilized egg to not be implanted, which I consider an abortion", just as I can say "driving a car can sometimes result in the death of a human being, which I consider murder".

The risk is reduced by taking this pill. 90%. Per time. Over a year, if that's what would happen if you regularly took it (which, I would like to remind you, would be a very poor proposition due to side effects, and sheer cost... $30+ every time you have sex?), you'd likely still get pregnant.

You're right that teens have a lot of fucked up ideas about sex, primarily due to the lack of education in schools. I know, for the average person, quite a lot about contraception. But that's because I can go on Google Scholar and read what's on there, not because it was taught in my school.

Ok, so if that scares the shit out of you as a parent, GO TALK TO YOUR TEENAGER AND TELL THEM TO USE A CONDOM, FOR FUCKS' SAKE. Someone that stupid is going to get pregnant no matter how hard you try.

So you're going to stop responsible adults from having quick access because teenagers could do something really stupid (if they had, um, a lot of money and were really quite uninformed), which is probably just going to get them pregnant (which, if they're that stupid, was bound to happen anyway)...?

More like "Parents can't be trusted to make decisions for their childrens welfare." That needs a social worker with a four week training program.

It is a challenge in the bastion of liberalism that is our school system to instill real moral values, self worth and respect into children. After all, humanism and relativism are easier to embrace.

Humanism is as much of a religion as any..... just one that can taught in a school... unlike christianity.

To be completely fair, with a four-week training program they will know more than the bottom-rung parent, and any decent parent will have already instilled those values into the child.

There is absolutely no reason to tell the parent. So why do it?

Humanism generally involves profound moral values.

Christianity was taught in my school, and let me assure you that it gives fuck-all moral values. If you need to scare children into being moral with religion, you are a terrible educator, and furthermore it will not work, because you are a terrible educator.

Well....then, it's just another form of birth control, just a larger dose. But of course what I'm arguing makes no difference anyway.

No, it has very much the same effect as taking it immediately after. It can still allow an egg to be fertilized and then not implanted (an "abortion"). Regular birth control does not allow that because the women who are on it do not ovulate.

So I guess the real question here is:

Is a non-implanted fertilized egg a human life form?

Personally I think so, but others may disagree.

I still support the use of Plan B for reasons I mentioned a few posts back, but I still consider xzxzzx's scenerio an abortion.

The next question is:

Is Plan B designed to do this as a backup to it's primary use, or does it usually not prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg?

*shrugs*

You might be able to say, in a way, that you are "aborting" by stopping a fertilized egg from being implanted (or, more accurately, reducing the already-not-high chance of that happening). That is a fine thing to debate, and if you'd like to, then let's.

But that's not what we're talking about, because EC has already been available for many years under prescription. We're talking about whether or not it should require a prescription or not. And the answer is clearly no, it should not require a prescription, because there is no reason it should.

It's not dangerous, there are little to no diagnostics to be done by a doctor, it's a time-critical drug, and it is too inconvenient, too unreliable, and too expensive to be used as regular birth control.

It's not "designed" to do that. It's "designed" to throw a woman's cycle off by effectively telling her body "we've finished ovulating!" — one of the things that a human body does before ovulation is that it makes the edometrium receptive to a fertilized egg. This prevents that. It's an incidental (but positive, in terms of preventing pregnancy) effect. (Of course, this is all very oversimplified, but I believe still accurate.)

That is exactly how a pro-life person explains the abortfacient nature of birth control pills. There is no debate, as that has been investigated and the pill will cause fertilized embryos not to attach to a "poisoned" uterine wall.

This pill, yes. Obviously "the" (combined) pill doesn't work this way.

But regardless, this happens naturally all the time anyway. Ah well.

Ok, that's fine. You've explained. But that's basically wrong.

Fertilized eggs do not normally happen if a woman is on "the pill" (that is, the combined hormone pill), or on a high dose progesterone-only regimen (Depo-Provera, for example), or on an intermediate-dose progesterone regimen (Cerazette, for example), because, and this is important, ovulation does not occur while on most kinds of hormonal birth control.


What you're talking about applies only to low-dose, progesterone-only pills, and even then, its primary action is still to disrupt the ovulatory cycle, its secondary action is to thicken the cervical mucous (preventing fertilization), as well as preventing mobility of the fallopian tubes, thereby inhibiting sperm transport, and only if a sperm gets this far and manages to implant an egg, does the "abortfacient nature of birth control pills" come into play.

Let's say we've got two groups of women:

Group A, which is using low-dose, progesterone-only pills.
and
Group B, which is not using any contraceptive method.

Which group, over a cycle, do you think will cause more fertilized eggs to be created and "die"?

First, some statistics that I got from reputable sources (some of which are from memory):

About 50% of the time, on a low-dose, progesterone-only pill, a woman that would have ovulated will not.

About 25% of implanted eggs will be miscarried (in most of these cases, the woman will not even know she was pregnant unless she was using a pregnancy test). Let's be very conservative and say 10%.

About 30–50% of fertilized eggs will not be implanted in a normal woman. For calculation purposes, use the very conservative figure 25%.

I'm going to assume a couple of numbers for the upcoming calculations (mostly to simplify):

100% of group B ovulates every cycle (this figure doesn't change the calculation)
50% of group B's eggs will get fertilized.
50% fewer of group A's eggs will get fertilized.
100% of group A's implanted eggs will "die" (not true).

Ok. So:

Out of 100 women in group A, 50 will ovulate.
Out of those 50, 12.5 will have a fertilized egg.
Out of those 12.5, 9.4 will have that egg implant.

That's 9.4 eggs that didn't make it.

Out of 100 women in group B, 100 will ovulate.
Out of those 100, 50 will have a fertilized egg.
Out of those 50, 12.5 will not implant.
Out of those 50, 3.8 will implant, but be miscarried.

That's 16.3 "dead" eggs from no birth control than low-dose progesterone pills... or about 75% more.

If you cared to, you could find that the rhythm method "kills" more embryos than the pill:

http://press.psprings.co.uk/jme/june/355_me13920.pdf

But that's inconvenient for your world view, isn't it?

That article fails to consider one major thing... natural death is moral, induced death is immoral. That is the whole point here. The morning after pill induces death. Just like death by leathal injection. The only difference is the age of the person being killed.

I don't have sources for you... but..
There is a high corrolation between use of 'the pill' and breast cancer.
An actual abortion has an even higher corrolation.
(the studies are probably mentioned on some prolife sites, with actual percentages)

It's funny/sad.. as the use of artificial contraception goes up.. so does the number of abortions.:rolleyes:

I'm against both because they ARE harmful to a woman's health.

Actually no, this article doesn't fail to consider that at all. If you had read through it entirely, you would have found that near the end it said:

"One might draw a moral distinction between techniques that cause embryonic death (such as abortion and IUDs) and techniques that employ a mixed approach of preventing conception and increasing the likelihood of embryonic death in case conception occurs (such as the contraceptive pill and the rhythm method). There may indeed be a psychological distinction, similar to the comfort a person in a firing squad receives from not knowing that it was his bullet that killed the victim, but I do not think that this distinction has any normative force."

Also, in the case of the rythm method, the death of the embryo isn't "neutral"; the death may have occured "naturally" in a sense, but the couple practicing the method has actually physically done something to cause the embryo to die - they've supplied it with an inhospitable environment in the uterus by fertilizing it in the later stage of ovulation. Had they had not targetted that period to have sex, a fertilized egg would not have died, even though their intention wasn't necessarily to actually fertilize an egg and then let it die.

Similarly, with the Plan B pill, the desired affect is NOT to have a fertilized embryo die, but rather prevent an embryo from coming into contact with sperm in the first place.

This is not a debate on whether or not the pill is good or bad for the health of the woman taking it - it's on whether or not it's ethical to allow other people to choose to take the pill. If we want to keep people from harming themselves in general there are plenty of other more harmful, legal substances out there that we can look at. Also, without sources, this could be a completely false alligation - to even begin discussion on this we would need to see the original article.

Rhythm method is as unnatural as a medicine. Don't pretend just because one uses a chemical that it's any more artificial.

These studies are about the combined pill, not the "plan B" ones. The "plan B" pill we're talking about here has no significant effect on breast cancer when taken once or twice in life, and the combined pill ("the pill") doesn't have the moral issues brought up.

Also, the correlation is hardly "high". Quote from Dr. Richard Sullivan, high-up member of Cancer Research UK on the research into the correlation:
source

So basically the experts are telling us not to worry about it. :)

So's skydiving, driving, chocolate, caffeine, fatty foods, and leaving the house. Presumably you're "against" those too? Nobody's forcing people to take the pill, and the data on side effects is easily available (and, if I recall, given to people upon embarking on using the drug anyway).

Eh, if you think the plan B pill is abortion, don't use it. Just like how if you think abortion is wrong, you don't get one done. Just like if you think getting drunk is wrong, you don't do it. Or jaywalking, or eating human shit.
If it's wrong don't do it. Teach your children to know the difference between right and wrong so they won't do it. Other than that, you have no control over other people's actions and you are not responsible for them. You can tell them that you think something is wrong and maybe they'll listen to you, and maybe they won't that's up to them.

Just because something is legal doesn't mean it is good and right and safe. It's not illegal to stick your arm up your friends ass to the elbow. That doesn't mean you should do it.

So... really I guess everyone's in agreement that Plan B should be over-the-counter?

I agreed in the beginning. To make all my ranting shortened, I just argued that Plan B can sometimes be considered abortion which could in rare cases be a good thing.

Yeah.

Huh. Interesting that rockouthippie and Megarock have stopped posting in this thread. Perhaps they did some reading before trying to post?

I don't agree that it should be, but I don't really give a shit because I'll never use it. My wife is on regular birth control and I also use a condom for additional protection against pregnancy and because it's just easier to clean up afterwards.

Then why don't you think it should be?

Condoms don't feel as good.

Stickers for the win... (Patches - Ortho Evra or whatever it is...)

I don't think it shouldn't be either. I don't care.

So... because you'll never use it, you don't care?

So...

Because you'll never get breast cancer (well, it's almost impossible), you don't care about research in that area?

[edit]I'm really not trying to make fun of you. I don't understand why you don't care.[/edit]

Contraceptive medicine is not the same medical research as curing breast cancer, pregnancy is not a disease. Even if pregnancy is a disease, we certainly already know a foolproof preventative measure.

People don't just get pregnant out of the blue. Your analogy is flawed. This pill neither adds nor takes away anything from the abortion/contraception debate. It will not turn people into irresponsible sluts any more than other birth control already has. As for the debate on whether or not it is abortion, who fucking cares because abortion is already legal for just about any reason in this country and that's unlikely to change.

Who cares, you don't need a prescription to get an abortion at an abortion clinic, do you? If not then this pills OTC status is irrelevant, whether or not it actually causes abortions.

Everybody ought to have a vasectomy. For about a month it feels like somebody thumped you in the nuts, but you never have to worry about pregnancy ever again. It's the best.

I'm not going to bother explaining the stupidity of that.

Oh, I think you understood it in the misanthropic way I intended.

It's not stupidity, barring the existence of a higher power. There's absolutely nothing wrong with just dying out.

Earth would be a much more stable place without humans.

You didn't really answer me, but perhaps I wasn't clear. Let me give you a couple example scenarios:

A woman gets raped. She wasn't on birth control, because she wasn't in a relationship, and wasn't interested in one.

A woman who's using condoms with her partner (as birth control has too many side effects for her) has one break.

A woman forgets to take a low-dose progesterone pill, but doesn't notice, and has sex anyway. (The efficacy of that pill is highly reduced if not taken on a very regular schedule.)

would this pill need to be over the counter then?

Taking the high dosage pill is probably going to make her puke before it has a chance to help any.
So the daily pill isn't fool proof, but the new one is?



------------------------------------
Fact: Nobody here has anything close to an informed opinion.

Fact: this discussion is heavily biased by people's already preconceived deep-rooted beliefs about abortion.

Fact: the separate positions of 'personally moral', 'law', 'freedom', 'socially acceptable', and 'should be taught in public schools' get muddled to the point of discussion-destruction around here with every discussion.

Fact: Most people here have no idea what compromise means.

Fact: Nobody actually reads anyone else's posts. They just try to argue whatever stereotype they think the other persons are close to.

Fact: Nobody is actually interested in further understanding someone else's position on any topic at hand.

Fact: Real debates have moderators for a reason

Fact:
http://www.argaste.com/img/arguing_on_the_internet.jpg

Not gonna argue much more, I don't think I've espoused much of an opinion as such so far (edit: So I'm gonna provide one below!), but:

Most people considering emergency contraception probably consider puking a bearable side-effect.

For the record, though: My main opinion on this is that it's clearly controversial, but since time is a factor, since it is a contentious subject with no clear logical answer, and since imposing arbitrary, opinion-based rules upon others is fairly reprehensible, this medication should be available over-the-counter.

But my general opinion on most things is that keeping them legal is preferable until a really good case can be brought against them biases me in this respect, and as Shakey points out, it's just an opinion.

Your opinions/interpretations of what you see don't necessarily qualify them as facts. As a matter of FACT (meaning by definition), your "facts" are more correctly labeled as stereotypes, since you have bundled all of the non-you posters together and made broad generalizations about them, whether true or not.

And here's an example of why they're not true:

If no one comes close to an informed opinion, then why are they backing up statements with sources and reasonable supporting details?

I don't really want to spend time going through and proving all your "fact"s wrong, but I'm sure just about anyone could just by looking at the thread/posts.

Fact:
If link digging constitutes an informed opinion, then I'm Miles Davis.

Nice to meet you Miles, you still on the gallons of booze and countless doses of heroin?

Scenario number 1, have an abortion.
Scenario number 2, have an abortion.
Scenario number 3, have an abortion.

Serious contender for "dumbest thing I've said sober". You'd need non-oral medication, yeah.

Why not use emergency contraception? It's far less emotionally fraught than abortions, and there is less general moral concern, too.

I'm just saying that this doesn't add anything to the debate. Who are the people who want this drug so badly? those in favor of abortion. If abortion is morally okay , then why?

As a contraceptive, if you're dumb enough to screw up using existing contraceptives, who's to say you're not going to somehow screw this one up as well?

As abortion, well we already have abortion, so what's the difference? Price maybe?

The only reason this pill is so hotly debated is because someone people see it as abortion. So what? abortion is already legal, dumbshits. This doesn't change anything in the debate.

As always, inform yourself and make your own decisions, and let others do the same.