There has been a lot of debate going on since the FDA agreed to ease restrictions on the morning after pill. Personally, I feel the easing of such restrictions to be a great victory for American women, but some feel otherwise. There is considerable argument over whether or not the pill is a contraceptive, or a weak abortion drug, and, as much as I hate to admit it, it does seem to be both.
While I disagree with the fundies, I see exactly where they are coming from. They aren't being inconsistent here. In the issue of stem cells, they fight for the rights of the zygote at no matter what age.
To be honest, while I do think that it is arbitrary to define life at any certain point along the continuum, it does make a certain sense, from their viewpoint, to define life as beginning at the joining of the sperm and egg. That potential human has vis genes arranged. It may not come to term, but it is no longer haploid genetic material.
The next issue is the definition of conception. You can't call something a contraceptive if conception has taken place. If we want to change the definition of conception to mean implantation of an embryo, then fine, I'm certainly all for that, but this certainly isn't a fuzzy term. Either conception is fertilization, or it is implantation, but it can't be both, and whichever it is will determine whether or not Plan B is a contraceptive (unless taken very quickly).
Don't get me wrong, I am very much a pro-choice individual, but if you say that implantation is a prerequisite for life, why not extend it to saying live birth is a prerequisite? Many children will be stillborn. For that matter, infant mortality is quite high in the developing world, so why not allow "contraceptives" up to age five?
Clearly I am playing the devil's (or is it God's?) advocate here. As a practical issue, one has to draw a line somewhere, and for the good of the mother (as well as the potential child) we cannot be too restrictive. What I do take issue with, however, is the claim that fundamentalists are being hypocritical or illogical when they suggest the life begins at conception. This is a highly impractical viewpoint, but it is, indeed, a far less arbitrary one than what is championed by others. In point of fact, I also subscribe to an arbitrary viewpoint, and can find nothing to support it other than that I feel it a situation where the rights of the mother are more important. But this too is arbitrary!
Personally, I think life begins somewhere around 25, depending on the individual, but I don't have to run a major world religion.
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2 comments:
Problem with this one:
There are those who argue that "Plan B" type drugs cause a fertilized egg to fail to implant in the uterine lining.
Most seem to believe, particularly supporters of the drug, that it simply prevents the sperm and egg from having their own microcosm of intercourse.
No one seems to have a definitive answer...
Of course, for most of the history of medicine conception was considered to have occurred when sperm fertilized egg. This, as you rightly point out, is a very clear breaking point from Before, when all that existed were two independent cells and After when the independent cells have disappeared and in their place is a cell which could not have existed absent fertilization.
But in the early 1970's the powers that be considered the old understanding of when life begins to have become....inconvenient. After all, how is society going to pave the way to be rid of all the kids that "free love" (otherwise known as ever more commercialized sexuality) would generate if they were considered human life?
Sincerely, a former zygote (as were we all)
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