Sure, that happens. But since it ALSO prevents ovulation, there’s no egg cell to get fertilized.
Right?
And if you knew that already, why did this exchange happen – specifically the text I have highlighted in red?
Did a bit more Googling, didja?
So you have convinced yourself that suppression of ovulation is 100% reliable, and no pregnancies are blocked through prevention of implantation, even though that is one of the design features of oral contraceptives? You are in denial, sir.
No, no. I’m sure there’s very little in life that’s 100% reliable.
But people lost their lives in car crashes every day, and I don’t propose banning car travel. People drown, and I don’t propose to ban swimming. I do support making it illegal to deliberately run someone over and I’m stridently opposed to holding someone underwater until they expire.
I don’t propose banning birth control pills for the tiny fractions of time that they somehow fail to prevent ovulation. The user has no way of knowing this has happened, just as the driver of the car had no way of knowing that this particular trip would involve a fatality. When that happens in a car it’s an accident. And when that happens in a pool it’s an accident. And when that happens in the course of an especially rambunctious fallopian tube – it’s also an accident, unintended and not foreseeable by anyone involved. The intent of the pill is to prevent ovulation, and the vast majority of the time, that’s what it does.
Now, would you care to at least admit you didn’t know this until I called you on it?
Then the union of parental DNA to form a unique genome. Your indignant stalls for time are too obvious, Bricker. Work on that.
I love this kind of rationalization. Killing babies is evil, EVIL! But if you didn’t mean to do it… okay.
Besides, is the “intent” of the pill to prevent ovulation? I thought it was to prevent pregnancy (it also has some other benefits that aren’t specifically pregnancy-related). I doubt the precise moment the process is interrupted is a matter of much concern to anyone taking it.
So any comments on IUDs yet? I can’t help but note the selectivity of your responses.
I have no need to stall for time.
Bryan, I’m a pro-life person in a (generally) pro-choice country. Do you imagine there’s going to be some new argument I’ve never heard before? Some amazing fact that I’ve never had to answer, some proto-zinger that will send me scurrying back to my Vatican masters for intensive consultation before I can figure out what to say?
My rebuke of you was not a stall – it was a rebuke. You don’t know, or don’t care about, the basic assumptions that drive my position, despite the fact that I’ve mentioned “new genetic individual” severals times in this thread alone.
So let’s see if I can get all your questions handled:
That would be bad.
It would not be quite as bad as abortion, but it would still be deliberately – as opposed to as an accidental side effect – creating a situation in which a human life perishes.
Think of it as the difference between chopping someone up with a sword, or dropping them off in the middle of Joshua Tree National Park.
It’s pretty well established that birth control pills prevent ovulation, and also make implantation less likely. It’s possible to imagine a situation in which a frisky ovarian follicle isn’t sufficiently cowed by the elevated estrogen levels into believing it’s already released an ovum, and so it does. And sometimes that results in pregnancy, because the endometrium still thickens in the uterus and is ordinarily still released. It’s true that the pill also contains synthetic progesterone (confusing called “progestin”) which works against the effect of the estrogen and the luteinizing hormone. Estrogen and LH trigger a thickening of the endometrium; progestin inhibits this effect – but not completely. It also thickens the vaginal mucus, which inhibits the chances of the sperm ever reaching the egg.
So the bottom line is that if one is taking the ordinary birth control pill, the effect is to inhibit ovulation completely, and in the vast majority of cases that’s what happens. Lightning may strike: the ovary may release an egg anyway; the endometrium may not be suitable for implantation at that moment in that spot. But that’s something that happens anyway: even with no artificial birth control hormones in the picture, a fertilized egg may fail to implant. That’s not murderous in the slightest.
How is that different from any other aspect of the criminal code? Deliberately or negligently running over people in your SUV is a crime; accidently doing it is not. Do you also love that? I’m glad, because people should love the law.
I’m commenting on why what the pill does is not a terrible thing, at least as compared to the killing of an unborn child.
Motive is important when there’s a wrongful act. But your question twists the conditions. Why do I care what the intention of the user is, if the act itself is not generally wrongful? If the act is wrongful, THEN I care if the intent is also wrongful, or not.
Answered above.
By the way – in case that drooling idiot Lobohan stops by, please note that presumably a person intent on establishing a Catholic theocracy would not be particularly sanguine about the legal use of birth control pills, which the Church regards as a moral wrong.
Ah, some meaty answers, which I shall address forthwith.
No, because I have no expectation that facts much matter to you, evidenced by your references to bear-baiting and numerous other irrelevancies. I figure you personally are a lost cause on this issue. Possibly by pointing out the obvious and numerous holes in your position, I might make this more apparent to observers, but I’m really here just for my own amusement.
I don’t personally care that you’re Catholic, by the way, so if you scurry the destination doesn’t really matter.
How is “sperm meets egg” such a dramatic departure from “new genetic individual”? Isn’t the union of parental haploids what makes a new genetic individual? Was my tone not sufficiently reverent or something?
mmmkay.
Well, a person dropped off in the Park might survive long enough to find shelter. An embryo that can’t implant and finds its way out of the uterus doesn’t even have that chance. But in any case, I get that you’re opposed to “sword-chopping” a fetus. I’m not, since I recognize what distinguishes a fetus from someone who might otherwise go for an arduous walk in a park.
It’s only even remotely “murderous” if one chooses to define “new genetic individual” as a possible murder victim. I also can’t help but notice your specific terminology of “the ordinary birth control pill”. What’s your stance on the so called “Plan B” solutions that work up to several days after intercourse? Murder? And despite your “Answered above”, I don’t see anything here relating specifically to IUDs.
By the analogy you’re trying to create, most of the time people run over pictures of babies (not murder), but sometimes they run over actual babies (murder) but we have no practical way to tell who did what, nor even to know the exact percentage of actual babies, but we know some actual babies were actually murdered…
We wouldn’t tolerate this in other circumstances, if it was actually murder by any reasonable definition.
Twists? Pshaw. I’m merely pointing out the reality of the situation, which I gather to you is somehow rude. Do you think women taking birth control for that purpose care about the exact timing and mechanism of pregnancy-prevention? Do you think they should? Is a woman who expresses determined indifference (she doesn’t care in the least how it works as long as it does) a possible murderer, as might be someone who indifferently fires off guns with no care for who the bullets hit, if anyone? Besides, you admit that implantation-inhibition is happening. How is that not “wrongful” by the definitions you’re giving and thus worthy of analysis of intent?
Not that it needs much analysis. Her intent is to not be pregnant, to not suffer the considerable personal hassle of a pregnancy and the considerable financial hassle of a resulting child. I fail to see what purpose is served by thwarting that intent.
No it wasn’t, as described above.
Well, you don’t have to be seeking a Catholic theocracy (the full Ponty, as it were) to still be irrational on the issue, arguing for laws that serve no purpose but to harass.
Truth be told, of course, I mainly wanted an excuse to say “the full Ponty”.
Because “sperm meets egg,” isn’t the key moment, and you asked about the key moment. It’s like saying that the marriage happens when the bride walks down the aisle…close, but no cigar. When sperm meets egg, hydrolysis occurs. That’s a necessary key step, to be sure, but at that point all you have is a tiny cell inside a bigger cell. Still to come is a meiotic division – and that’s STILL just a physical mix of two contributor’s genetic components, not a true and distinct third genetic individual. And finally you get to the first mitosis, which is really the point at which the haploid cells become a diploid human being.
Yes, I know that’s your position. I don’t share it, but I understand it completely.
Which I do.
Wasn’t the IUD question the one with the new device that, “…unambiguously has a contra-implantation effect?” If not, then my apologies – please restate the question or direct me to the post in which it appears. But if that WAS the question, then my post clearly answers it.
No. Accident, and unintentional death, are not murder. And we tolerate a certain percentage of accidental death ever day, as I mentioned already when pointing out car and pool deaths.
The method itself has the primary, and highly effective, result of preventing ovulation. That’s no more murderous than someone who cleans swimming pools not caring what particular safety methods are in use, but knowing that as a general rule, someone has studied the issue and approved the scheme. I wouldn’t lay drowning deaths at the door of the pool cleaner; I wouldn’t indignantly demand to know why he, personally, didn’t review, evaluate, and assess the safety measures in use at each pool he cleaned.
Nor do I. That’s a perfectly permissible intent to have.
You know, this attempt at hairsplitting is amusing in part because it involves things that are actually smaller than a human hair. Your objection is stupid and I dismiss it.
Fortunately, you don’t have general agreement in the society you live in, since trying to define birth control as murder (which you are advocating to some degree) would represent a significant intrusion into individual freedom and be more harmful than beneficial. There was a time, certainly (pre-Griswold, I guess), when things were different. Returning to such times is not desirable for many people.
Thing is, it behooves people who like individual freedom to oppose you, since occasionally politicians will pander to you by passing laws like Wisconsin’s.
You post does not, actually. You’re trying to draw a line between stopping ovulation (not murder) and, I guess, interrupting the process after the first mitosis (murder!). Implantation-inhibition, by these lights, is murder. IUDs inhibit implantation at least some of the time (I gather the precise mechanism by which a pregnancy is prevented or stopped can vary quite a bit) and I asked about a hypothetical device that unambiguously stopped a pregnancy at implantation. I could also speculate on a device that stops pregnancy at or just after the first mitosis, if that’s where you want to (currently) place the goalposts.
So is such a device a murder weapon?
Well, let’s say the death is indeed intentional. The woman intent is to not be pregnant. She doesn’t know for certain if she is, but if there’s a zygote/embryo in play, it dies. Is this significantly different from shooting bullets into a closet, with the intent of making sure the closet does not contain a living person, whether it previously did or did not?
My analogy’s better, in that it has some relation to the issue at hand. What do the pool cleaner’s actions have to do with drowning? I wouldn’t lay a drowning death at his door, either, because it makes not the slightest amount of sense to do so. Who’s the pool cleaner an analogue for? The woman? The pharmacist? The manufacturer of the birth control pill?
But you would impede her from acting on it and (ideally) punish her and those who would help her in acting on it. My intent (in addition to amusing myself) is to point out (to anyone who cares to read this) why this is an unnecessary, intrusive and on balance harmful idea if put into practice.
Hello, Strawman. You keep trying to get me to define birth control as murder, I keep declining the invitation, and now it seems you’ve tired of the effort and are simply going to declare that that is what I’ve done anyway!
But stacked up against the fact that I have unambiguously said that I don’t, and wouldn’t prohibit birth control, leaves your charge lacking.
I do concede, of course, that I don’t have general agreement from society on the other question – human being from the moment you’re a couple of cells – and i acknowledge this.
But if general agreement from society is the yardstick, then I’m in much better shape when it comes to the ultrasound requirement that started this thread.
And I suspect your love for societal approval is more of a short-term affair.
Can’t we all just agree that as long as the fetus dies, its ok? 
Hey, you acknowledged, grudgingly, that birth control pills can stop implantation, right? Do I have to find the exact quotes? And implantation takes place after what you describe as the formation of a “new human being”, right? So how is it a straw man? Is it not the logical result of what you’re describing?
And actually, YOU strawmanned ME, since I had the good sense to include a qualifier (“which you are advocating to some degree”) which you ignored and dropped. So “Hello” right back atcha.
Good, that means you’re not completely irrational. However, birth control issues come into play when we start indulging “slippery slope” arguments that start at one-day-before-birth and extend backward toward conception. If birth control methods do destroy a post-meiosis zygote/embryo (I earlier mistakenly wrote “mitosis”), what’s the distinction between this and a D&C abortion? Is there some other checkpoint in gestation we should take note of?
I find that unfortunate, myself. Oh, well, that’s voter ambivalence in a democracy for you, easily exploitable.
I don’t even know what this means. You mean the approval of members of this message board?
Ideally, some eighty plus years after the natal expulsion.
Maybe if Walker’s staff stopped replying to this thread and started working on jobs in Wisconsin as he promised, things would be better all around.
So far Wisconsin has only added 53K jobs compared to the 250K promised during the 2010 campaign.
They need their “laserlike” focus to be on jobs not on preventing women from choosing.
What, creating an artificial demand for hundreds of new ultrasound techs isn’t enough?
Well, maybe just a few dozen. I mean 7000 abortions a year, that’s just… 20 a day, right? Well, if it’s just weekdays, that’s about…28 a day?
Who is replying to this thread that you suspect is on Walker’s staff?
By the way, Bricker, you kneejerked to just one paragraph from post 1372. How about addressing the rest of it?