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Or How Birth Control Becomes An "Abortifacient?" One of the main proponents of the idea that oral contraceptives are abortifacients is an unapologetic Catholic doctor, Larimore, who has been selling this doctrinal agreement agenda for some years now. The Larimore agenda is, unfortunately, quite misleading. The argument of the 'abortifacient' effect of some contraceptive methods is predicated on the faulty premise that, as Abortion Opponents continually declare "Medical science recognizes that life begins at conception as an undisputed fact." This is neither accepted fact nor is it undisputed. Some doctors have the audacity to think they have the right and qualifications to make such pronouncements. Most doctors are aware that the combining of genetic materials will produce a unique DNA but are not foolish enough to believe that a sexual reproduction method involving live gametes is the creation of life. Many even recognize that we, as society or scientist, can not properly define what we mean by 'life' and therefore would not have the audacity to pronounce such "truths" for humankind. Most people furthermore are capable of recognizing that the question of "when a life begins" is irrelevant. It's a red herring argument. In the abortion debate the only germane question is "when do we grant membership in our society to a developing human." With respect to : (This Paper)
This is currently the definitive study used by Abortion Opponents to justify an attack on Oral Contraceptives, Emergency Post Coital Contraception (or Morning After Pill - MAP), and similarly acting contraceptive methods. Dr. Larimore in particular has been trying for some time to have this article accepted by the medical community. He has really had no success among most physicians. The main reason for the rejection of his work is not the factual information he presents. His statistical facts are nor really being questioned by me in this post. What is being questioned is his bias and how this bias on his part has influenced his work and his conclusions. Dr Larimore is at least up front with his bias. His anti abortion religious background has as far as I know always been well known and he at least does not couch his bias in some form of "concern for patient" type misleading statement as others in the Abortion Opposition (AO) movement do. He says: With that mental attitude going into any study he conducts one must ask just how reliable the findings are and one must further contemplate the fact that Dr. Larimore, a physician and scientist, prefers to use the term "developing baby" to describe a clump of differentiating but not yet differentiated cells containing human genome that others in his community would properly refer to as a 'morula'. This use of 'lay' terms is in and of itself not a problem but what it clearly points out is that Dr Larimore crosses the boundary of his discipline when he starts making social pronouncements with respect to his findings. A baby is a born human being. A morula is not and never has been a baby. In order to buy into Dr Larimore's way of thinking there are a number of tenets that medicine must also accept. It must accept that from the time an ovum is penetrated by a spermatozoon a new patient exists - whether that act occurs in a fallopian tube or a petrie dish and this contention is , quite frankly, utterly ridiculous. Given the failure to implant rate, and the loss rate in Artificial Insemination this means that any combining of these elements puts a 'patient' at unacceptable risk. The normal outcome of sexual intercourse is that 2/3 of embryo's will die. If a failure to complete the blastocyst stage of development is an abortion then the outcome of most sexual intercourse is an abortion. By Dr Larimore's standards medicine is showing callous and possibly even criminal disregard for 'patients'. The claim that the 'deaths are caused by natural causes' and therefore acceptable is as ludicrous as the claim that if I withhold life sustaining food and liquids from a patient the patient will die from natural causes. I am also aware that the work Larimore cites with respect to ectopic pregnancy is suspect and incorrectly used in the study I cite above, but that is beyond the scope of this post and not necessarily germane. The peer reviews will no doubt cover it if the article ever makes it to a proper peer journal (JAMA NEJM AJ Obs & Gyn, Fert & Ster). This is not germane because in order to accept Dr Larimore's hypothesis one must accept that a pregnancy is possible in a petrie dish. Fertilization and cell multiplication are certainly possible in a petrie dish, a pregnancy is not. A pregnancy does not occur until the time of implantation. Oral contraceptives using combination pills will 99.99% of the time prevent ovulation. The mini pill does the same 80% of the time. The second action is to prevent fertilization by providing a hostile environment, from a cervical mucous perspective. In the unlikely circumstances an ovum is is actually penetrated by a sperm the probability of non implantation is increased again due to a hostile environment and no implantation means no pregnancy. For those interested in this topic from a clinical perspective these links are possibly useful.
Emergency Contraception including the use of your regular BC pills in an Rx emergency. Ann Rose has one of the most comprehensive treatments of the subject
on the net at
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