Stardate 20011018.1044 (On Screen): California now permits pharmacists to issue "morning after pills" without a prescription. I think this is a good thing. But predictably, the Right to Life movement hates it.
Christine Thomas, acting executive director of California Right to Life, said the group believes the drug induces abortion and therefore would have opposed the bill even if it had excluded minors.
Beliefs come in different flavors. Thomas believes that abortion is wrong. I happen to think abortion is morally acceptable under some circumstances. But these are ethical choices, not subject to proof, and her opinion on this is just as valid as mine is. On the other hand, if someone says that they believe that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, then I don't have to respect that belief; it's subject to scientific investigation and it is provably wrong. Equally, Thomas says that her group believes that morning-after pills induce abortion. This is not a belief, this is a false statement. It takes a long time for the egg to travel down the Fallopian tube, and the egg is fertilized in the Fallopian tube. This is, in fact, critical; the fertilized egg has to have divided a certain number of times before it reaches the uterus or it won't be capable of implanting and beginning a pregnancy. What a morning after pill does is to prevent the egg from implanting. That's not an abortion, which is the deliberate termination of a pregnancy already in progress. Pregnancy doesn't begin until after implantation; a pill that prevents implantation is not an abortion.
What's really going on here is that she's using the word "abortion" incorrectly; what she means by it is any deliberate action which prevents a fertilized egg from becoming a baby. In that case, her problem is with the dictionary -- and she loses there, too. (discuss)
