Plan B First, Cancer Vaccine Next…

And HIV Vaccines eventually. Reuters reports:

A former U.S. Food and Drug Administration official who quit the agency because it failed to make a "morning after" contraceptive available without a prescription said on Wednesday she fears other health advances could also be sidetracked.

Susan Wood, who headed the FDA's Office of Women's Health, said she was "very worried" political pressure on the agency from the same conservative groups who opposed wider availability of the contraceptive could also result in a delay for a new vaccine that protects against cervical cancer…

She said some of the same forces who opposed over-the-counter sales for Barr Pharmaceuticals' Plan B emergency contraceptive are suggesting that reducing one of the risks involved in sexual contact could lead to promiscuity among young women -- the same argument they used against Plan B.

"That appalls me." she said. "I also worry when and if we reach an HIV vaccine" that the same argument will be raised, she said.

Whole article here. My own earlier worries about the FDA's new efforts to regulate morality here.

Comments

[Hakluyt]

"I also worry when and if we reach an HIV vaccine"...

If the Catholic Church holds to form they'll oppose just like they opposed anti-syphilis drugs.

[Matt]

Just a reminder. Five GOD DAMNED catholics on the supreme court. yee haw.

[Larry Hastings]

I guess it's time to rename the FDA the FDMA--the Food, Drug, and Morality Administration.

larry

[Akira MacKenzie]

Here's a thought: If AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality as the Fundies claim, then how is that we mere humans can thwart an omnipotent deity's will if we are able to develop a vaccine?

Oh! I get it! Satan must have provided the information to those devious atheist scientists who serve the Gay Agenda, right?

Then again, that would mean that Satan is stronger than God, which again calls into question His alleged omnipotence.

Religion makes my head hurt.

[mediageek]

Things keep going like this and gaius is likely to get his wish...

[Brian]

Of all the sins, why do they always focus on sex? If fatties keel over from eating too many bacon triple cheeseburgers, isn't it God's will and who are we to have blood pressure medication, cholesterol lowering medication, heart bypass surgery etc.? Probably shouldn't give them any ideas.

Trying to delay or prevent that cancer vaccine is one of the sickest things I've ever heard. It's depraved. I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to vote for a Republican again. Used to but can't abide the fundies.

[Hakluyt]

Its not like they will actually keep it out of people's hands.

[Jason Ligon]

If we live in a world of government research grants, I'd much rather see a targeted approach. It seems to me that we'd want to start with diabetes. Why don't we take a huge whack at that for a few years instead of throwing money around so that the money is so diluted we don't make headway anywhere. You can't win a fight against multiple opponents by just throwing jabs at each one. If you knock one out of commission, you are back into a managable situation.

Start with the big dogs that kill the most Americans and maybe see if there are any quick hits. Six sigma seems to work everywhere else, why not here?

[Stevo Darkly]

Just a reminder. Five GOD DAMNED catholics on the supreme court. yee haw.

If only there were some kind of "religious test for office" that could prevent this kind of thing from happening.

[Akira MacKenzie]

Of all the sins, why do they always focus on sex?

Personally, I think the more important question is: Why is sex considered a "sin" in the first place?

(Yeah, yeah, I know. This from a guy who hasn't been on a date in eight years.)

[Hakluyt]

BTW, everyone should be getting a few bottles of beaujolais nouveau for the weekend.

[mediageek]

Brian, they focus on sex because it's the only way they have of actually letting out all that pent up sexual frustration.

One upon a time, a fundy snake-handler type told me that the band Jars of Clay was Satanic, and then launched into a five minute spiel about a picture on the cover of one of their albums that showed, horror of horrors, a woman's breast! And that this hot...er...horrid display of womanly hotnes...er...shame, was an obvious attempt to send us all straight to H E L L !

[M1EK]

KERRY WOULD HAVE BEEN WORSE! Because, uh, he would have put a liberal in charge of the FDA who would have liberally stopped drugs from being released. Or something.

If I was female, I'd have the urge to find one of those "no difference between Bush and Gore" Nader voters and kick them in their gonads and strife.

[tampa]

Getting slightly off topic, but only slightly, when I Google FDA's Office of Women's Health the first link is a Welcome to the Office of Women's Health. Where do I go for the FDA's Office of Men's Health? I am somewhat knowledgeable of anatomy, don't men have unique health issues just like women?

When I was a kid I asked my mom why there is a Mother's Day and a Father's Day (stop me if you've heard this before) but no Children's Day. She said that every day is Children's Day. I guess we need an Office of Women's Health since every other office is already the Office of Men's Health. Oh well, at least research money goes equally to breast cancer and prostate cancer.

[Hakluyt]

Kerry would have been different in his own fucked up ways.

[mediageek]

M1EK, your posts might actually be worth reading if you'd stop engaging in what is commonly known as "False Dichotomy."

It's wearing thin, dude.

[angry female]

Its not like they will actually keep it out of people's hands.

No, but it does make it damn near impossible to get.

Once I think I visited every drugstore in a major (huge!) metropolitan area before I finally got my hands on Plan B at a Planned Parenthood. Probably one of the most humiliating, insulting experiences with authority I've been subjected to as an adult. Not to mention the risk that I wouldn't get the drug in time before the (assumed) zygote implanted itself.

[smacky]

I really think that this denial of cervical cancer drugs and Plan B (well, along with wage disparity) is the saddest manifestation of misogyny today. Oh, and add religion to that list.

[David]

Why is sex considered a "sin" in the first place?

That's a good question, Akira. I've often wondered about that myself. It seems to common in different cultures, but not all. My guess would that it grew out of the wife=property concept, and like everything else, accumulated dogma and superstition over the generations.

[Eric the .5b]

Of all the sins, why do they always focus on sex?

Same reason most people who bitch about censorship only give a rat's ass about protecting speech when involves showing nekkid people - sex is interesting.

[tampa]

I really think that this denial of cervical cancer drugs and Plan B (well, along with wage disparity) is the saddest manifestation of misogyny today.

Which part of misogyny is the huge disparity between federal money spent on breast cancer research and federal money spent on prostate cancer research?

[Stevo Darkly]

If the Catholic Church holds to form they'll oppose just like they opposed anti-syphilis drugs.

That's interesting. Hak, can you point me in the direction of more info? I did a Google, and couldn't find anything about the RCC opposing drugs that treat syphilis. All I found was that the RCC opposed the use of condoms as a method of avoiding the contraction of syphilis in non-monogamous sex situations, as opposed to the "don't have sex outside of marriage" strategy that the RCC advocates. And there was a rather nasty pronouncement by a pope around 1829 to the effect that if you fool around and get a disease you deserve it, so only a sinner would use a condom to avoid syphilis.

I read the article, and all I actually see is some projection and a pre-emptive strike. I didn't see a quote from any Religious Right figure opposing the drug. I just saw a quote from someone who was "very worried" that someday such opposition might be raised.

I don't know about other religious groups, but Catholics are most likely to oppose Plan B on the grounds that it can be an abortaficent (by preventing the implantation on the uterine wall of an already fertilized egg). Concerns that Plan B would promote promiscuity are pretty peripheral to that abortion-related.

I'm not ready to dismiss this as hysteria/paranoia and misunderstanding yet. But at this stage, it's as if someone had voiced concerned that "environmentalists might be opposed to the development of hybrid cars, because that would only foster the continued spoiled, self-centered, lazy, high-tech-addicted, resource-consuming, car-dependent lifestyles that were some of the reasons that radical environmentalists oppose SUVs."

And then suddenly we'd have 100 posts jumping all over the Sierra Club for its (presumed) stupid opposition to hybrid cars.

It seems a little premature to me, is all I'm saying.

[jimmy]

interesting how this susan wood fails to identify a single person of group applying this "pressure." not denying the presuure exists, but it's getting increasingly easy to simply set up straw men for the pro-abortion crowd to then scream at (like, e.g., 20-year old legal memos). can we maybe pressure the FDA to grant over-the-counter status to drugs that actually save lives instead of merely getting rid of inconvenient pregnancies? can we agree that abortion is not the most important issue in the world and tell both the choice and life crowds to shut the hell up?

[Matt]

My guess would that it grew out of the wife=property concept, and like everything else, accumulated dogma and superstition over the generations.

Armchair Behavioural Geneticist that I am, Im going to say it sex as sin is a meme developed to keep your wife from procreatin' with genes other than your own, thereby increasing the chance you raise your own genes, not anyone elses. Which manifests in wife=property, religious shame, etc etc.

[Matt]

Which part of misogyny is the huge disparity between federal money spent on breast cancer research and federal money spent on prostate cancer research?

Tampa, from your comments I can only infer you believe that the health and well being of breasts is strictly of interest to women.

[Ron Bailey]

Stevo and jimmy:

You might want to take a look my earlier post to which I link because it does quote at least one guy (Hal Wallis) from the religous right who thinks that the new cervical cancer vaccine might "send the wrong signal."

[vabs]

"Why is sex considered a "sin" in the first place?"

I think it's because historically, population growth has been a threat to the viability of human societies. It's been a continuous struggle to adapt to the pressure population growth puts on human resources. One way to adapt to that pressure is through economic and technological innovatation. Another is to construct social norms that help regulate reproductive behavior. Hence, the devaluation of women and disproportionate restrictions on female sexuality -- because the birth rate depends on the number of sexually active women rather than men.

In capitalist societies, the whole problem of population tends to diminish because more people can be sustained economically and because individual women tend to reproduce less. Thus, in these societies it is less necessary to control female sexuality and social norms regarding women become less restrictive.

[tampa]

I can only infer you believe that the health and well being of breasts is strictly of interest to women

If radical mastectomies were common among stripper and porn-star aged women then I would demand that the federal government put down everything it was doing until breast cancer was eliminated. But they are not...

As a father of two daughters and a husband I have a profound interest in at least certain women's health. As the grandson of a man with prostate cancer I also value men's health. My point is that regardless of whether it is fundamentalists or ACT UP, the various health-related agencies within government have never been rational when it comes to spending research money in an equitable manner. As such Plan B is only symptomatic of what happens when politics determines spending rather than the market.

[SR]

"Its not like they will actually keep it out of people's hands."

Actually, they probably would. I have a really difficult time imagining someone starting a lab in their basement to make cervical cancer vaccine.

[joe]

It's all, like, politics, man.

Withholding drugs because they'll keep people who don't love Jesus enough from getting sick...recalling drugs that cause people to have heart attacks...it's all, like, the same thing.

A pox on both their houses.

[Stevo Darkly]

Ron, thanks for that reference.

So now I have reason for mild concern that some members of the Religious Right (but not Catholics) will oppose the development of the vaccine.

But I'm still even more worried that radical environmentalists will try to block the development of hybrid cards. I found a quote:

Another interesting tidbit of information (i got this off a NOVA program that we watched in Environmental science): The process of making a car releases as much waste (including greenhouse gases and smog producing gases) as the car will produce in it's lifetime (this is an average car). So, all in all, cars are not good for the environment, some cars are better (hybrid, biodiesel, etc.) but it's much more environmentally sound to walk, ride the bus (a lot of big cities are actually running their buses off of biodiesel now because it's so much cheaper for the to do so, and they get tax incentives), or ride a bicycle.

True, this is just a forum post from nobody special, but I'm worried it's just a matter of time before the Sierra Club stumbles upon this information! It causes as much pollution to manufacture a car in the first place as to operate it over its liftime -- holy cow! That's quite a bombshell.

I am sure it's only a matter of time before the Sierra Club calls for the outlawing of individual cars in favor of wholesome, healthy walking, bicycling and rapid, efficient, public mass transit powered by electricity. (Which will be generated by clean, environmentally friendly coal plants. Oops, I mean atomic energy. I mean windmills! Or acres of solar panels.)

[vabs]

Regarding breast cancer v. prostate cancer research funding, one reason for the disproportionate spending is probably because more people die at a much younger age of breast cancer than of prostate cancer. Here's a link from someone who's arguing that death rates from breast cancer among younger women are actually low. Nevertheless, from the data he shows, breast cancer deaths among women aged 35-54 are about double those from prostate cancer among men in this age group.

http://www.menweb.org/throop/health/stat/breast-prostate.html

The data are a bit old (1992), but not too old.

Whether or not it's appropriate to discriminate based on death rates by age, or to what extent the discrepancy in funding reflects the discrepancy in death rates, are other questions.

[Darkly]

hybrid cards = hybrid cars

I would like to report a defect in your forum software. It somehow makes typos invisible in the "preview" fuction, so they can only be detected after actually posting.

[joshua corning]

mmm i think this is pretty stupid...i mean i can't get anti-biotics and steriods over the counter becouse of leftist conservative groups...why suddenly are we up in arms becosue of blan b?

what exactly has changed?

[Darkly]

PS: And "liftime" = "lifetime."

PPS: That DAMNED Sierra Club!

[Phil]

joe, I'm pretty sure that the only person arguing anything even remotely close to what you're ridiculing is tampa. Everyone else seems fairly unhappy about the situation at best. Why you gotta alienate potential allies like that? Why you gotta hate?

[Dylan]

jimmy,
The anti-cervical cancer drug does save lives. Opposition to Plan B I can understand a little more because, like Stevo said, it can be an abortaficent. I don't oppose it myself, but I can see someone who is pro-life having a problem with it and not being completely insane.
Opposition to the anti-cervical cancer drug, otoh, is basically being pro-death. It's utterly bonkers that the FDA might be listening to input from people who think that it's a bad thing to have medicine to treat illnesses or injuries that result from behavior that they don't approve of.

And Brian, right on. Not that I want to generalize, but judging from some pics I've seen of Christian Right adherents, gluttony is not one of the sins they worry too much about. 🙂

[Scotty]

Stevo,
I wouldn't worry about those guys - they will soon be extinct.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/11/16/gree.DTL

[tarran]

At the risk of deeming discourtious, I'd like to repost a post I made in the last tiem we discussed it. I think the conversation was dead by the time I made it.

I think that we libertarians and statists like joe are arguing at cross purposes:

Joe is arguing that the FDA mostly does a good job and that any organization regulating drugs would be subject to simmilar political pressures. Others are arguing that the FDA is an evil organization that routinely prevents good drugs from getting to market.

The problem is not that the FDA exists. Certainly there is a need for regulatory bodies that inspect and audit drugs. Prior to the existence of the FDA, this function was carried out by the A.M.A. and Consumers Union (the guys who today publish Consumer Reports).

The problem with th FDA is that its edicts have the power of law. If the FDA does nto approve of a drug, if someone tries to use, manufacture or sell the substance, people will kidnap him, steal his stuff and stick him in a cage. By comparison, should a private group, like Consumer Union, recommend against a drug or even a particular manufacturers formulation, the consumer still is free to purchase or not purchase the drug as they desire.

This is the heart of the problem with the FDA. It eliminates our control over the health of our bodies. This loss of control has deadly results. For example, my employer's flagship drug product is not approved in the US. but is approved in Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan. As such hundreds of kids in the US with a particular genetic disorder are doomed to live short lives full of agony while other children accross the border have a chance at an almost normal life. The reason for the disapproval was a serious gap in our quality systems that could have, but never did impact the quality of our product. Thus many parents who would choose to risk the drug to give their beloved children a chance to live into adulthood and a childhood free of pain are denied the freedom to make that choice.

Additionally, the FDA has perverse incentives not to view drug safety and efficacy as its primary concern. If the FDA goofs and allows anothe Massengil debacle does it suffer? Not a whit. If they make a mistake, the rules and laws will be changed, and they will be given more money and a greater bureaucracy to command. The FDA only needs to keep a few senators and representatives in a particular comitee happy and it will continue to get funding. They could do this by approving safe and efficacious drugs, or they could do it by banning drugs that a powerful senator frowns upon. They do not directly answer to the consumer.

On the other hand, let us assume a group like Consumer Union makes the mistake. Well, people will start ignroing its recommendations. Then it will have trouble raising money. Moneyed individuals who are dissatisfied with the performance of the testing will look for alternative organizations. If one is not available some critic will start this own. It is highly unlikely that it wil get this far; Underwriter Laboratories (the UL sticker on your appliances) has been certifying electrical appliances fro I think over a century now, and I can find no complaints about its performance. The insurance companies who bankroll it have found it quite beneficial in reducing their costs.

To me, the performance of the FDA is irrelevant. It is the fact that I have no recourse when I disagree with it that is the problem.

[smacky]

Opposition to Plan B I can understand a little more because, like Stevo said, it can be an abortaficent. I don't oppose it myself, but I can see someone who is pro-life having a problem with it and not being completely insane.

I know that I'm about to be ostricized as a troll for what I'm going to say next, but I don't really care. People who oppose Plan B are completely insane. It is just another method of birth control. If you took all of the millions of religious people who don't understand what this pill does and who think it is "abortion in a pill", and educated them so they learn it is really another method of birth control, there would be a lot less opposition, I think. Or whatever opposition remained would be the exact percent of people who think all birth control is immoral and wrong. Flushing an unimplanted trespasser from a woman's body is no different than wearing a condom for a man.

[/throws myself to the wolves]

[Shem]

Why is sex considered a "sin" in the first place?

Actually, Matt's right. It was originally an attempt to prevent bastardy by cutting off the problem at it's source. If you look at cultures that have strong taboos against children being born out of wedlock (eg; any semitic one, for starters) they also tend to have strong prohibitions against any form of sexual relations outside of a strict marital relationship. Compare this with areas like northern Europe in the prechristian age, where bastardy was, if not accepted, then at least not seen as a massive, unforgivable sin, and consequently sexual attitudes were much more permissive. An additional illustration of this was in Puritan societies in the 1600s, where as many as 70% of first births to married couples took place within 8 months of marriage. As long as the two were married, no sin was considered to have been committed.

I think it's because historically, population growth has been a threat to the viability of human societies. It's been a continuous struggle to adapt to the pressure population growth puts on human resources.

I'm sorry but this is just wrong. For human history up to 100 years ago infant mortality rates were extraordinarily high, and so population growth was seen as being a benefit for just about everyone concerned. This attitude didn't change until modern methods made it possible to understand the connection between large populations and catastrophic events like diseases, an understanding which coupled with improved medicine to make large families unpopular. And, as for the Capitalist argument you make in your second paragraph, I have to point out again that many societies that never so much as heard of capitalism were extraordinarily permissive of sex throughout history. Not everything can be justified by economics, especially not when it comes to human behavior.

[Scotty]

Stevo,
I wouldn't worry about those guys - they will soon be extinct.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/11/16/gree.DTL

[Stevo Darkly]

I would like to report a defect in your forum software. It somehow makes typos invisible in the "preview" fuction, so they can only be detected after actually posting.

Also, ironically, "fuction" should be "function."

For the sake of efficiency, can we set up a thread dedicated entirely to me correcting my typos?

Also: See the thread above where Osama bin Laden calls for the USA to sign the Kyoto accords. I just knew the Sierra Club was in league with radical forces advocating a return to medieval levels of civilization!

DAMN that Sierra Club!

[Shem]

Smacky-I agree with you, but I think your response is perhaps a bit too glib. If one holds to the sort of principles many orthodox Catholics seem to have, one can make the argument that Plan B is much worse than any other form of birth control, as it actually can cause a fertilized egg to be prevented from implanting, whereas a condom or diaphragm prevent the sperm and egg from ever meeting, meaning that pregnancy can never occur. The fact that they see the use of either one as a sin shouldn't be confused as them seeing it as the same sin.

Although, I admit to being mystified at the fact that they see both sins as being more or less equal to each other. One would think that an item that could prevent an abortion would be seen as better than one that could make an abortion take place immediately, but there it is.

[smacky]

Stevo,

We can make one for you in the grylliade.org bulletin board. How does this sound:

"Stevo Darkly's Thread For Improving Typing Skillz and Eliminating Typos"

[smacky]

Shem,

I'm sorry, but I don't believe I was being glib at all. It's just that rather than waste my breath trying to explain the same logic of what a pregnancy is over what a pregnancy isn't over and over, I was simply stating the facts, regardless of how a religious person sees it.

One would think that an item that could prevent an abortion would be seen as better than one that could make an abortion take place immediately, but there it is.

That's tricky of you, and I have to correct you on that. A fertilized egg is not a fetus and is therefore not a pregnancy, much less an embryo. Therefore no abortion takes place. It is more of a forced mestruation than anything else. And, if the fertilized egg has already implanted itself into the walls, it's not effective -- and the woman is then pregnant.

If you're going to define an abortion (wrongly) as anything expelled from a vagina, well, I'm due for my monthly abortion in a few weeks, so can you pick me up some tampons while you're at the store?

[Dylan]

smacky,

I don't think you're being a troll, and I basically agree with you. I admit, I'm pretty ignorant about Plan B. Stevo and Shem have both suggested it can be an abortaficent, however, so I was just saying that it makes sense that pro-lifer would have a problem with it. And I know people who are pro-life but not anti-birth control.
Being pro-life and anti-birth control does strike me as nuts. The whole point of birth control is to prevent a pregnancy from ever occurring, so an abortion won't ever be necessary.
Regardless, I certainly don't oppose it either way.
But the anti-cervical cancer drug is another story. It saves lives, doesn't just prevent pregnancy -- you'd think someone who is ostensibly "pro-life" would support it.

[Heather]

"political pressure on the agency from the same conservative groups who opposed wider availability of the contraceptive could also result in a delay for a new vaccine that protects against cervical cancer..."

How is this alleged "pressure" applied? Sounds like BS to me.

[Zubon]

tampa,
Without checking what the FDA's Office of Women's Health actually does, there are significant disparities that could justify paying special attention to women's health in prescription drugs. At its simplest, women can get pregnant, so there are fewer legal drugs for them.

All drugs must undergo testing. If you test a drug on a pregnant woman, there is some chance that she will miscarry as a result. No matter what waiver of liability anyone may sign, would you as a pharma executive want to put that one in front of a jury? Therefore, at the margins, fewer drugs are tested on pregnant women. The same applies to getting doctors to prescribe these drugs (Who wants to be in that malpractice trial? "You gave her a drug that was never tested on a pregnant woman?!").

I am told, but I have not verified, that the same logic applies to any pre-menopausal woman. Rendering someone unable to become a mother is a huge potential risk, because that one is going in front of a jury that hates big pharmaceutical companies. While this should also apply to men, the perceived risk of a jury empathizing with him is lower. Maybe a crying woman evokes a larger response than a crying man, or at least a different one that leads to larger civil penalties. Actually, it does not even need to be true: so long as relevant people believe it, at the margins, fewer drugs will be tested for women.

So there are some special issues in testing that the FDA may have an interest in considering, given our legal system.

[mediageek]

"Stevo Darkly's Thread For Improving Typing Skillz and Eliminating Typos"...and stuff.

[David]

A fertilized egg is not a fetus and is therefore not a pregnancy, much less an embryo. Therefore no abortion takes place.

Smacky,

I agree with you, but for some people a fertilized egg is a fetus(and a fetus is a child, etc.). Their argument with plan B is the same as is for birth control pills.

Oh, and tampons might as well be called abortion pillows.:)

But the anti-cervical cancer drug is another story. It saves lives, doesn't just prevent pregnancy -- you'd think someone who is ostensibly "pro-life" would support it.

That's because they're not "pro-life", they're really just worried that their god will punish them for "allowing" the sins of others.

[Dylan]

smacky,

Just read your last post, and clearly you know what you're talking about more than I do about this drug:

A fertilized egg is not a fetus and is therefore not a pregnancy, much less an embryo. Therefore no abortion takes place. It is more of a forced mestruation than anything else. And, if the fertilized egg has already implanted itself into the walls, it's not effective -- and the woman is then pregnant.

If that's the case, then I stand corrected.

Anyway, my point wasn't to defend banning or making Plan B hard to get. I think it oughta be available over the counter.

[smacky]

Stevo and Shem have both suggested it can be an abortaficent, however, so I was just saying that it makes sense that pro-lifer would have a problem with it.

No, that is incorrect. And I see in your last post you realized that. To correct Stevo and Shem, no, Plan B is not an "abortificant". That is a fancy buzzword that someone must have picked up somewhere from a rabid pro-life whackjob.

I agree with you, but for some people a fertilized egg is a fetus(and a fetus is a child, etc.). Their argument with plan B is the same as is for birth control pills.

Yes, and for some people in means out and up means down. If we're going to redefine what a pregnancy is, then you'll have to outlaw condoms and sponges and diaphragms, etc. Just because the sperm and egg have been in contact with each other doesn't mean anything. There are plenty of couples who can't get pregnant specifically because the fertilized egg won't implant in the womb. *yawn*

[Shem]

I admit, I'm pretty ignorant about Plan B. Stevo and Shem have both suggested it can be an abortaficent

I'm not suggesting that it is an abortifacient. I'm suggesting that it can reasonably be seen as one. Check your definitions again smacky; an abortion can be carried out on an embryo or a fetus, and an embryo doesn't become a fetus just because it implants. It's an embryo until it's eighth week. Catholics who believe that life begins at conception will always believe that it causes abortion. I don't agree, but given the fact that I don't have any way to conclusively say where a fetus becomes a person, I think that their argument is perfectly rational, if, by my reckoning, incorrect. I ask, can you address this point in a manner which will provide an exact time upon which reasonable people can hang their hats? Because if you can't then you were being glib, and frankly making life more difficult for the people who want to find some common ground.

[Stevo Darkly]

A fertilized egg is not a fetus and is therefore not a pregnancy, much less an embryo. Therefore no abortion takes place.

I hate to get all Jesuity, but if a person believes that life begins at conception (that is, when the egg is fertilized) as almost all abortion-abolitionists do ... and consider it a human being from that point on .... then they also have to consider deliberate human action to prevent its further development and expulsion as a deliberate abortion.

On a less controversial note:

We can make one for you in the grylliade.org bulletin board. How does this sound:

"Stevo Darkly's Thread For Improving Typing Skillz and Eliminating Typos"

Alas, until further notice, I can't join grylliade's site because at the moment my only access to the Internet is at work, and the corporate firewall prevents me from receiving the e-mail that tells me how to set up my participation or whatever.

(I was going to make an analogy that the e-mail I am sent is prevented from implanting itself in my in-box, but it can still be considered a fully formed e-mail even if I never get to see it or react to it. But then I decided that was stupid.)

I will eventually have Internet access at home, but have many other competing priorities in the meantime.

OT, but the best vanity license plate I ever saw said: EDITER

[Shem]

I was going to make an analogy that the e-mail I am sent is prevented from implanting itself in my in-box, but it can still be considered a fully formed e-mail even if I never get to see it or react to it. But then I decided that was stupid.

But then, you did it anyway. Bravo 😉

[smacky]

Check your definitions again smacky; an abortion can be carried out on an embryo or a fetus, and an embryo doesn't become a fetus just because it implants. It's an embryo until it's eighth week.

Shem,

A fertilized egg isn't even considered an embryo until it's implanted. What Plan B expels isn't even an embryo yet, and if it is, it physically can't expel it. Hang your hat on that.

Moreover, why are there so many apologists for right-to-lifers? I didn't think that libertarians were for the idea of might makes right. So many people think wrongly. That doesn't make it right. Hasn't anyone ever critically questioned the pro-lifers obsession with life? What I mean to ask is, if destroying two gametes (the fertilized egg) is considered a mortal sin, then how do they view a typical death? Isn't death the greatest sin of all to the same people, by their logic? Just because some time has passed (one year, ninety years) shouldn't make it ok by that line of reasoning. Why aren't there pro-lifers marching around cemetaries with picket signs? Where is their respec' for life!?!

[vabs]

Shem:

"It was originally an attempt to prevent bastardy by cutting off the problem at it's source."

I definitely don't discount the desire of males to avoid having their wives impregnated by other men as a factor in norms about female sexual behavior, but his argument was one of biological reductionism. He was saying that cultural norms about female sexuality are a result of men acting in the service of their DNA. But I think humans are much more complex than that. Men don't want their wives impregnated by other men because they want to know that the children they're working to raise are actually theirs. Sounds reasonable to me. But to describe a norm as a "meme" is too simplistic. Human norms around reproduction are not explainable in the same way as male cats fighting over access to a female. Norms are intellectual constructs that regulate behavior. They are not products of instinct and they do not equal behavior.

"If you look at cultures that have strong taboos against children being born out of wedlock (eg; any semitic one, for starters) they also tend to have strong prohibitions against any form of sexual relations outside of a strict marital relationship."

Well sure. I don't see any reason these two wouldn't go hand in hand, as out-of-wedlock births would have a strong and meaningful correlation with out-of-wedlock sex. But are you saying that one is causally related to the other? If so, which way does that causal relationship go?

Generally speaking, it's not very useful to try and explain one attitude by its relationship to another attitude. There needs to be something to explain why attitudes exist at all. And I do think it comes down to survival -- our survival as individual organisms but also as societies, since living in societies increases our chances of surviving as individual organisms. That's another reason why economic explanations of human behavior are higher on the scale than biological reductionist ones, the primary reason being that human behavior is not controlled by instinct (rendering other reasons superfluous, actually.)

"For human history up to 100 years ago infant mortality rates were extraordinarily high, and so population growth was seen as being a benefit for just about everyone concerned. This attitude didn't change until modern methods made it possible to understand the connection between large populations and catastrophic events like diseases, an understanding which coupled with improved medicine to make large families unpopular."

For most of human history, people lived in hunting and gathering societies whose continued existence was precarious and who could easily be wiped out during famines. Under such circumstances, population size had to be controlled. This did not necessarily mean "zero population growth" all times, but it did mean there had to be some mechanism in place to repress population growth in times of particularly scarce resources. Often in these societies, the mechanism was infanticide, specifically preferential female infanticide -- because again, population growth depends on having more women to conceive and incubate babies and not on having more men to impregnate women.

[Shem]

First of all, being lockstep with libertarian principles is not a requirement to read this site. I wish people would stop trotting out "I thought libertarians *liked Ayn Rand, were pacifists/in favor of self-defense, were objectively in favor of eating puppies* as an all-purpose denunciation. I don't even like capitalism, I just don't have any better ideas. Please don't assume I or anyone else are all that good of a libertarian.

That being said, I'm not in favor of might makes right, I just am in favor of not being a jackass to people I disagree with. Not all those people are as hard-line as you think. Some of them can even be convinced, but not if you start your argument with something that's guaranteed to immediately put them on the defensive. Not only does it ruin your chances, but it makes it that much more difficult for people who are interested in being reasonable.

As for the embryo/fertilized egg argument, I'm not even going to address it any further, mostly because we already more or less agree with each other, except to ask if you can provide me with any substantive difference between the embryo that implanted and the fertilized egg that didn't, other than the fact that one made it's way to the uterine wall? I ask because the realization that I could not was what made me more willing to view people who believed life began at conception as not necessarily religious whack-jobs, even if I still found them to be incorrect. Maybe you see it differently. I must say I'd like to hear what information you have that makes you so capable of speaking with the conviction of a martyr.

[SM]

Stevo,
"Alas, until further notice, I can't join grylliade's site because at the moment my only access to the Internet is at work, and the corporate firewall prevents me from receiving the e-mail that tells me how to set up my participation or whatever."

You may want to check the spam folder. That's where my notification ended up.

[Stevo Darkly]

I just remembered something that makes me not want to pound this particular sore spot anymore, so I'm going to withdraw from this thread. It's about to turn into a debate on when life begins, and the amorality of natural events vs. the morality of human action and I don't want to get into that stuff again. I'm also starting to get a vibe that I'm on the verge of personally agitating a good person to no good end, and I don't want to do that either.

---------------

Anyway, in my earlier satirical posts, note that I:

1) Lumped the fringe of a movement with its more mainstream elements;

2) Jumped to conclusions;

3) Fixated upon one particular reason as the only possible rationale for a group's actions, while refusing to consider other possible, perhaps more reasonable motives; and

4)Condemned a particular organization and its members for holding views that they aren't actually known to hold.

Those are bad things, and we shouldn't do them.

[Stevo Darkly]

You may want to check the spam folder. That's where my notification ended up.

Alas, I don't have a spam folder at work. Or rather, I probably do, but only in the form of a giant mass corporate spam-dumpster that I personally don't have access to.

[M1EK]

'M1EK, your posts might actually be worth reading if you'd stop engaging in what is commonly known as "False Dichotomy."'

Try "True Dichotomy", because, in fact, the "Kerry would have been worse" argument comes from H&R regulars who aren't me.

[Isaac Bartram]

"Kerry would have been worse" is almost always a joke on H&R.

It's gotten old too, so hardly anyone uses it anymore.

[smacky]

I just am in favor of not being a jackass to people I disagree with.

Really? That's good to know. But the religious zealots don't seem to have a problem with it. I'm just returning the favor.

Not all those people are as hard-line as you think.

I don't think anybody ever proclaims their platform as "Hardcore Ignorant".

I'm not even going to address it any further, mostly because we already more or less agree with each other, except to ask if you can provide me with any substantive difference between the embryo that implanted and the fertilized egg that didn't, other than the fact that one made it's way to the uterine wall? I ask because the realization that I could not was what made me more willing to view people who believed life began at conception as not necessarily religious whack-jobs, even if I still found them to be incorrect.

Shem,

other than the fact that one made it's way to the uterine wall: You can put it that way, but by wording it that way, you're unfairly discounting that event. Phrasing it that way is ignoring a pretty huge fact, though: namely, if it hasn't attached itself to the wall, it isn't part of the woman. By the same false rationale, if I have sex with a guy, he is "a part of me". Why? Well, it's in there, isn't it? Obviously, this is not true. It's not reasonable to fault the woman for being the place of fertilization. Once the fertilized egg is conceived, i.e. become a part of the mother where it has a place for nourishment, then I could see how it is considered "life". Have you ever gotten a fertilized chicken egg in a carton? Did you cry about it? I'm wondering.

[thoreau]

On the topic of Plan B, I will only observe that there is a difference between opposing something because you think (however rightly or wrongly) that another person (or proto-person, or unborn angel, or whatever) is hurt, versus opposing something because it might remove an adverse consequence from a choice that you oppose.

Disagree all you want with the Plan B opponents, disagree with their premise about the status of a fertilized egg, but under their premises they are arguably opposing the use of coercion against a human being. They may be wrong about what constitutes a human being and what constitutes coercion, but at least there's an element of respectable reasoning in there.

The people who oppose vaccines against cervical cancer, however, are just plain fucking nuts! I can find nothing worth playing Devil's Advocate over. Their stance is just totally insane, there's no way to spin it as defending innocent life, it's just plain control freak shit. End of story.

Besides, under an ethos of "hate the sin, love the sinner", even if one believes that promiscuity is a sin, why should one want those sinners to die as a consequence? Isn't it better that they live long enough to see the error of their ways and then accept Jesus and spend the rest of their lives tithing to a fundie congregation?

Save the sluts--they might join us some day!

🙂

[M1EK]

'"Kerry would have been worse" is almost always a joke on H&R.'

There are still people who say it, paraphrased of course, and do so seriously. There are many more people who say that there's only a trivial difference between Bush and Kerry (or Gore). Same thing applies to them.

[thoreau]

M1EK-

To be fair (I'm playing Devil's Advocate again), one could think that the overall difference between two people is trivial, but that the differences on particular issues are stark. Average a bunch of positive and negative numbers with random distributions and you get something close to zero.

Or, one could think that one is worse overall, but acknowledge that on specific issues he's better.

I'm not saying that's my stance, but it is possible for a logical person to think that way.

[smacky]

After I made my last post and read everyone else's, including Stevo's, I concur that I see where this thread is headed. I don't really have the time or inclination to spend any more time today debating when the particular moment is that life is conceived. For what it's worth, this wasn't meant as a religious tirade but a feeble attempt to convince more people that keeping Plan B illegal is a horrible idea, especially for those who are pro-life. Because if I'm a woman who feels she's made a consequential mistake that she's not ready for and can't get her hands on some Plan B, next stop is abortion clinic. That is all.

[thoreau]

smacky-

Here's a start toward a pragmatic reason why even people who think Plan B causes abortion might rethink opposition:

My understanding is that preventing implantation is only one of the effects of Plan B. Plan B can also prevent fertilization in a number of ways.

As Smacky said, not every fertilized egg implants. Does anybody know what factors affect the odds of implantation? Do other medications, stress, diet, exercise, alcohol, or other factors play a statistically significant role?

If it could be shown that some lifestyle factor affected the probability of implantation, would the Plan B opponents argue that a woman should take precautions after sex to improve the odds of implantation? (In their eyes, after all, any deliberate act that inhibits implantation is an abortion.)

I'm guessing that this question has been researched. Probably not from the abortion angle, but by fertility researchers trying to help couples who have difficulty with the implantation stage. The only thing that scares me is the possibility of a law mandating bed rest (or exercise, or a special diet, or whatever) for women who have just had sex.

Maybe it would be better if nobody tries to research this issue.

[The Real Bill]

Part of the Plan B problem is misinformation (duh!). Many folks writing about it confuse it with RU-486, the abortion pill.

[mediageek]

Besides, under an ethos of "hate the sin, love the sinner", even if one believes that promiscuity is a sin, why should one want those sinners to die as a consequence?

Bottom line, these fundies aren't so debased as to wish cancer on their worst enemies. No, they just wish it on anyone who doesn't conform to their concept of righteousness.

[Ammonium]

I think the solution is to make Plan B over-the-counter, but make it so that only pharmacists can sell it. Also, the users will have to show government ID to buy the drug and sign a police logbook (so that the police can make sure that you aren't buying too many contraceptives and reselling them).

Such a plan should be acceptable to the right. And I'm sure that there will be no objections from the left, since this is what my blue state is doing to cold medicine, with unanimous approval.

[Eric the .5b]

First of all, being lockstep with libertarian principles is not a requirement to read this site. I wish people would stop trotting out "I thought libertarians...

Especially when most of the time it's trotted out, it's to express the non-libertarian commentor's inability to square his/her simplistic take on what libertarians think with what libertarians actually think.

[Sandy]

smacky:

Have you seen the "five test tubes versus one baby" argument? It directly challenges right-to-lifers on their belief that a fertilized egg is a child. It goes, suppose you have sextuplets. Five are upstairs and one is downstairs. A fire breaks out, and you can either save the five, or the one. Which do you save? Most would say the five. Now suppose you have five fertilized eggs in test tubes in a fridge upstairs, and your infant daughter downstairs. A fire breaks out, and you only have time to save either the five test tubes or the baby girl. Which do you save? Any sane person says the baby girl--and right there they either have to demonstrate themeslves as completely out of touch with reality or agree that a fertilized egg is not the same as a baby girl.

Rereading the thread, I think you're mistaking channeling the thinking of abortion opponents with 'support' for them. I go further than most and think that life begins only when a fetus is developed enough for an independent life outside the mother with only food, water, shelter, and air. But having lived in South Carolina, I know that most anti-abortion wackos think that their god watches to see when one cell penetrates the wall of another and delivers the soul at that point.

So I can see why they might get upset with Plan B (shhhh...nobody tell them about taking 4 normal birth control pills). I still think they're wack jobs, but you have to understand the enemy's argument in order to defeat it. And once you understand it, then apply the five-test-tube-test and you can shave off enough wackos to stop some of the worst abuses.

Disclaimer: I built Plan B's new website that they never got to launch. I even created a database of pharmacies willing to dispense it without a prescription--but you can't see it now because the FDA would not approve the content of the site (and the FDA regulates all public statements about such drugs).

[crimethink]

She said some of the same forces who opposed over-the-counter sales for Barr Pharmaceuticals' Plan B emergency contraceptive are suggesting that reducing one of the risks involved in sexual contact could lead to promiscuity among young women -- the same argument they used against Plan B

Perhaps someone could point me to where anyone -- ANYONE! -- directly involved in the FDA's decision making has actually stated that they opposed Plan B because of promiscuity concerns. The guy talking about God guiding his minority report doesn't count, since it's just as likely, if not more likely, that he opposed it because it prevents implantation (ie, induces abortion).

[crimethink]

smacky,

A fertilized egg is not a fetus and is therefore not a pregnancy, much less an embryo. Therefore no abortion takes place. It is more of a forced mestruation than anything else.

Especially when you're talking about such crudely defined terms as "fetus" and "embryo", the terminology we choose for a thing does not determine what that it is. It is what it is. "A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet..."

[Shem]

Really? That's good to know. But the religious zealots don't seem to have a problem with it. I'm just returning the favor.

I just think that I should hold myself to a higher standard than they do, I suppose.

It's difficult for me to address your points, mainly because, as I have stated repeatedly, I agree with you. More or less completely in fact. But, the fact that I agree with you doesn't mean that the opinions of the people who disagree with us are somehow not internally consistent. If one accepts the premise that life begins at conception, then Plan B is taking a life, and therefore wrong. Other than the fact that I believe it to be incorrect, there is nothing about the argument that precludes a sane, rational person from taking it. And, I don't believe that the fact that somebody might be wrong ought to be justification for using personal attacks against them.

At any rate, Stevo has, I thin we can agree, served as the voice of reason. It would probably be better to drop this now.

[Brian Courts]

since it's just as likely, if not more likely, that he opposed it because it prevents implantation (ie, induces abortion).

True enough, but as I've said before I think we all know that the real underlying motivation is primarily opposition to abortion. Though I think many of the same people who are most opposed to abortion are likely to be at least receptive, and/or willing to use, arguments about promiscuity.

But that aside, what authority does the FDA have to decide anything because its members believe abortion is wrong?

[crimethink]

Sandy,

You're making the same mistake as Ron Bailey makes on this one. Your argument depends on the assertion that if a being is a person, we will automatically consider it worthy of saving (or mourning, in Bailey's example). A few easy examples show this assertion to be fallacious.

For example, let us consider a similar situation. Again, there are six infant children trapped in the building, five upstairs, one downstairs. The twist is, that the five are not your children, while the one is. Would you allow your child to die so that five others could live?

Does a person who says that they'd save their own child think that other people's children are not persons, and have no right to life? No -- they are merely proving that our emotions cause us to favor those to whom we are attached, even if doing so is illogical. It's hard to get attached to an embryo in a test tube, whether it's a person or not.

[Sandy]

No, crimethink, I specifically reduce it to being ceteris paribus. The only thing different about the five versus the one is their test-tube status. It's not news that we value our own children above other people's. It would be news if we favored one of our own over a greater number of our own. So the news is that, all other things being equal, they do not value that life as highly as the post-natal.

Otherwise, as Bailey points out, you'd have to have a funeral every time a fertilized egg failed to implant. So this pretty much points out that whatever their objection to abortion is, it has nothing to do with Plan B.

Further, a lot of people would even say that a good Christian should indeed save the five upstairs, even if they're not yours. So even if I were wrong about controlling for other emotional variables, that objection doesn't necessarily hold.

But I'm not wrong, and an easy example will show this. You've got a five year old upstairs and a baby downstairs. You can only save one. You save the five year old. Does either Pat Robertson or NARAL condemn you? Or you choose the infant. Does either condemn you? No in both cases, because whether or not you're a religious wacko, post-natal children are considered essentially equal regardless of age and equally worthy of protection. Neither would condemn you if you chose the infant. Because they're equal. Only the test-tubes aren't equal, so you'd give up five of them for one live child--even Pat Robertson would, were he sane.

[Viking Moose]

on board with you, Smacky!

[thoreau]

Sandy-

One could always argue that even if the baby and the test tubes are all yours, maybe the quality time you've spent with the baby has instilled a bias that blinds you to the moral status of the fertilized eggs.

So let's say it's a baby that you've never met (and you've never met the parents either), vs. 5 test tubes belonging to somebody that you've never met. That way there's no bias based on experience with the baby, and the decision really comes down to the moral status of the baby vs. the moral status of the embryos.

My hunch is that even the Pope would rescue the baby.

[Phil]

Even better, Sandy, leave the test tubes as test tubes, but replace the infant with a puppy. Ten bucks says most people, including most "pro-lifers," rescue the puppy.

[thoreau]

Phil, quit stealing from my campaign platform!

[Phil]

Even better, Sandy, leave the test tubes as test tubes, but replace the infant with a puppy. Ten bucks says most people, including most "pro-lifers," rescue the puppy.

[Brian Courts]

I think Sandy is right in that using your own child versus someone else's distorts the issue because of the immense value a parent places on his or her own child. Regardless of what a parent would do, we all recognize that from an objective standpoint if you are faced with the choice of saving five (or even two) children or saving one child, you would save the greater number.

The question I would ask is how many fertilized eggs would have to be upstairs before you would save them instead of the child? A thousand? A million? A billion? For me there is no quantity of fertilized eggs that would induce me to preserve them instead of the child. So I guess, for me, a fertilized egg's "relative life" value is exactly zero. But if you believe it has some non-zero relative value then it seems there must be a point at which there are enough of them upstairs that you would save the fertilized eggs and sacrifice the child.

Or another question - say there is a single fertilized egg upstairs and a dog downstairs. Do you save the fertilized egg and let the dog burn to death? A cat? Does the fact that one is conscious and can suffer and the other isn't, carry moral weight? I'm very tempted to say yes and save the dog. I'd be curious who thinks the answer is obvious one way or the other and why.

On this last point I see Phil already posed the question, but since I was just about to his post when I noticed that I'll leave it...

[thoreau]

With the fertilized egg and the dog, I guess it would depend on how desperate we were for kids. If that test tube was, for whatever reason, the only hope of having a kid (or the only hope short of another very long, difficult, and expensive treatment that might not even work), then I could see saving the egg instead of the dog.

I don't know enough about fertility treatments to know if the egg would really be so precious, but since we're exploring hypothetical possibilities I'll toss that out there. Indeed, out of compassion for others I might even save another person's egg if I knew that the egg was that person's only chance of having a kid.

But if it was just some random egg with no compelling story behind it vs. a dog? Definitely the dog.

[poco]

At its simplest, women can get pregnant, so there are fewer legal drugs for them.

What about postmenopausal, infertile, sterilized, or hysterectomized women? Can they be in the trials, at least?

[Hakluyt]

How about a roach? Would you save the roach? 🙂

[crimethink]

OK, how 'bout if there are ten senior citizens upstairs, and one child downstairs (none of whom are related to you). Which do you save? If you would save the child, which I think most people would, does that mean that senior citizens have no moral status?

What if there are ten "premies" with only a 50-50 chance of survival, in high-tech incubators upstairs, and you have equipment to remove all ten incubators in time to save them -- at the cost of the life of the child downstairs. Again, do premies have no moral status?

The problem with Sandy's and Bailey's args is that we decide whom we will save and whom we will mourn based on the subjective value we attach to a being. To claim, as they do, that a being is only a person if we feel it worthy of saving or worthy of mourning, is nothing more than a restatement of the absurd credo that a fetus is a person only if the mother wants to give birth.

[thoreau]

crimethink-

With the child and the senior citizens, there's the added complication that some of the senior citizens themselves might prefer that you save the child.

I don't know that these examples prove anything, but they can be useful to think about.

[Hakluyt]

They show what Judge Posner discussed so eloquently a few years ago - despite all of our rhetoric to the contrary, we have scorecards when it comes to the valuing of "life."

[smacky]

Especially when you're talking about such crudely defined terms as "fetus" and "embryo"

Call them crude if you want, crimethink. That only shows that you were never properly taught about sex education or human biology. If you're going to call these terms "crude" or "undefined", how would you feel if, for example, you were having an operation on your lower intestine and instead they remove part of your upper intestine? It's the same thing, right? It's a "crude" term, but I think you'd want your doctor to be precise. It's not convincing to be vague about science and simple cell biology.

How about a roach? Would you save the roach? 🙂

Hak,

*snicker*

[Serafina]

Many people seem to be operating on outdated assumptions of how Plan B works and confusing it with drugs that cause a medical abortion. The best and most recent scientific evidence we have indicates that the morning-after pill serves to block fertilization, while having no effect on implantation. That makes it contraception, not abortion. It prevents abortion rather than causing it.

Judy Peres and Jeremy Manier of the Chicago Tribune reported recently the consensus among experts that "there is no scientific evidence the pills prevent implantation--and considerable evidence they work mainly by blocking the release of an egg from the woman's ovary, so no embryo is formed." Studies by the Karolinksa Institute and Eastern Virgian Medical School have separately found no evidence that Plan B is an abortificent.

[Serafina]

And if every fertilized egg is a human being, Catholics and others who believe so must be in constant mourning because even under normal circumstances with no drug, 1 in every 2 fertilized eggs fails to implant. And of those that do implant, 1 in 4 spontaneously abort. That's a hell of a lot of death that they don't seem to be much concerned about. They don't even bother to provide religious ceremonies to mark the loss.

[crimethink]

smacky,

A fertilized egg, a fetus, and an embryo are the same creature at different stages of development. The boundaries between these stages are crudely drawn (as they must be) -- an 8-week fetus, for instance, is far more similar to a 7-week embryo than to a 30-week fetus.

To use your operation analogy, the section of intestine which is to be removed may be easily referred to as "part of the lower intestine", but it is not just any part -- it is a specific section of intestine which happens to be below the line where medical terminology places a boundary. The surgeon will be careful to remove that particular part; you would probably be quite angry if another "part of the lower intestine" was removed.

In other words, things are what they are, not what we call them. It's kind of ironic that I, who am often accused of basing my args on semantics, have to be pointing this out...

[Hakluyt]

crimethink,

The issue is if there is a reason to enclose embryos within our moral universe the same way we do a post-birth human. I'm not convinced that there is a reason to do so. Then again, I don't believe in things like souls, etc.

[crimethink]

Serafina,

I'm not sure where you're coming up with those numbers -- once an embryo implants, the mother's body will start 'acting pregnant', so are you saying that 1 in 4 detectable pregnancies naturally end in miscarriage?

In any case, though, you're falling in to Bailey's emotional-reaction worship, which is strange to find at a site called "Reason." Were Bailey consistent, he would have considered mostly brain-dead Terri Schiavo to have personhood, given all the fuss that people made over her.

[Hakluyt]

crimethink,

Oh, and I don't want to here anything about Aristotle and oak trees.

[crimethink]

Hakluyt,

It depends on whether you think that a being's residence in our moral universe is decided by us or not. I would claim it is not, that a being is or is not a person, regardless of what we think.

[thoreau]

crimethink-

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Serafina's numbers are right. Or at least let's just take it as a given (for the sake of argument) that a significant fraction of fertilized eggs fail to implant.

If there should happen to be drugs out there (now or in the future) that enhance the probability of implantation, would failure to take those drugs be akin to not throwing a flotation device to a drowning person? Would sexually active women have an obligation to take such drugs?

What if a study showed that certain foods or other lifestyle factors could significantly affect the probability of implantation? Would a sexually active woman have a moral obligation to eat the right diet or whatever?

(Note that I didn't say anything about whether such an obligation should be enforced by law, I'm just asking about what the most ethical course of action would be.)

[Hakluyt]

crimethink,

That's circular reasoning at its finest.

[Hakluyt]

crimethink,

BTW, we are going to make the decision. Arguing that its God's decision or what have you simply ignores the practical reality of the situation.

[Serafina]

Here, here,

"In the normal course of human reproduction, about 60 percent of embryos spontaneously abort and are simply flushed in the course of the menstrual cycle. In in vitro fertilization, about 75 percent of the blastocysts either fail to implant or are lost through spontaneous abortions."

That's an overwhelming loss of life, if you truly believe that a fertilized egg is a human life. I just think that it's strange that religious groups like Catholics claim equivalency of life yet have no formalized traditional rituals for marking or commemorating these daily deaths. That would be a rational position for them to take, but they don't, and I find it curious.

[thoreau]

Every zygote's sacred,
Every zygote's great,
If it's not implanted,
God gets quite irate.

[Brian Courts]

OK, how 'bout if there are ten senior citizens upstairs, and one child downstairs (none of whom are related to you). Which do you save? If you would save the child, which I think most people would, does that mean that senior citizens have no moral status?

No, it doesn't mean they have no moral status any more than saving two children upstairs means the one downstairs has no moral status. It just means that relatively speaking the moral status of the child is greater than the 10 senior citizens in this example. But presumably the senior citizens moral status is great enough that saving SOME number of them equals a child. In other words, if you could save 100 senior citizens or the child what do you do? A thousand? Clearly there is some "price" if you will, at which you choose to save the senior citizens instead of the child. But I suspect that no number of fertilized eggs would ever motivate someone to save them instead of the child. If that is true, then the moral value of the fertilized eggs is zero while that of the senior citizens most certainly is not.

Also, going back to address a point thoreau made, I am talking only about the value of the life of the egg itself, not how difficult it is for a couple to conceive that fertilized egg. Assume that whoever it belongs to can create them relatively easily, so that is not a factor in their value any more than the difficulty a couple faces in having another child would change the relative value an objective outsider places on the child in the basement.

[Stevo Darkly]

I had to return for this:

Many people seem to be operating on outdated assumptions of how Plan B works and confusing it with drugs that cause a medical abortion. The best and most recent scientific evidence we have indicates that the morning-after pill serves to block fertilization, while having no effect on implantation. That makes it contraception, not abortion. It prevents abortion rather than causing it.

Serafina -- thank you, thank you, thank you for that clarification!

Because Plan B can be taken up to 72 hours after intercourse, I was under the mistaken impression that it had to work by preventing fertilized eggs from being implanted. In fact, I think I looked this up and read that this was the case. Surely any "damage" (fertilization) that's going to take place, will have taken place sooner than 72 hours -- I thought.

I was so very wrong! I followed up you explanation by looking further and read more at http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,67432,00.html (warning: the 2nd page of the article won't open for me for some reason, but I think I've read enough on the 1st page).

It turns out that after intercourse, the little sperm bastard swimmers can live for up to five days. And Plan B works by blocking the release of eggs, so they can't get fertilized by any persistent spermatozoa that are still hanging around. That's what Plan B does.

However, if a woman has already released an egg prior to taking Plan B, it can still get fertilized and the woman can still get pregnant -- because Plan be does not prevent implantation.

If all this is true, then Plan B can not be considered an abortaficient, even by hardline life-begins-at-conception folks.

And no woman who ever took Plan B ever needs to fret that she might have had an abortion under any definition of same, if she were ever so inclined.

Fucking WHEW!

Apparently the mechanism of how Plan B works was not well understood earlier. Now that we know better, if this mechanism were explained better, then the "abortaficient" controversy evaporate. Expending energy on arguing "fertilized eggs don't matter anyway" just continues to obfuscate the issue in this case.

I apologize for doing my part to further the confusion.

[Stevo Darkly]

However ...

And if every fertilized egg is a human being, Catholics and others who believe so must be in constant mourning because even under normal circumstances with no drug, 1 in every 2 fertilized eggs fails to implant. And of those that do implant, 1 in 4 spontaneously abort. That's a hell of a lot of death that they don't seem to be much concerned about. They don't even bother to provide religious ceremonies to mark the loss.

This, on the other hand, is just plain silly. Crimethink has repeatedly made this point very well -- our emotional reaction to a death is no gauge of whether the entity that died is human or not. And it's rather dopey to keep returning to the argument that it somehow is.

Looky, approximately 155,000 people died in the past 24 hours. That's a typical day. Most of the rest of us, Catholics or not, feel no mourning for these lost lives except in the most abstract sense. And most of us won't be attending their funerals.

Funerals aren't for dead people -- they're already gone. They are for the living. The social purpose of funerals is to mourn our own loss of connection with someone who is no longer around, and to comfort the other survivors who feel a similar loss. That's why we don't hold or attend funerals for perfect strangers -- including zygotes that haven't developed to the point where we had a chance to have a relationship with them.

If an entity is human and entitled to human rights, then this must be determined by some intrinsic trait of that entity -- not by how other people react to it. Not by whether other people feel compelled to attend its funeral. Not by how much people feel compelled to rescue it. But by some trait within the entity itself.

"When does life begin?" is a difficult enough question, without trying to divert it into the question of "When does life begin begin to matter to me?" Can y'all stop doing that, please?