Is It Consistent With Religious Freedom to Force Christian Employers to “insure” for Drugs That Cause Abortion?
Question by Bruce: Is it consistent with religious freedom to force Christian employers to “insure” for drugs that cause abortion?
Under Obamacare, every Catholic institution larger than a single church? ?must pay for contraceptives, sterilization, and morning-after abortifacients for its employees. Each of these is directly contrary to the Catholic faith. Evangelical Christians face the same mandate to subsidize promiscuity, self-mutilation, and prenatal homicide. Is this consistent with or contrary to religious freedom as guaranteed in the First Amendment?
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/07/146511839/weekly-standard-obamacare-vs-the-catholics
Best answer:
Answer by Gwennie B
Sorry, but the morning-after pill isn’t an abortifacient, my dear.
Plan B is a brand of hormonal emergency contraception, which is, essentially, a high dose of hormones that prevent a woman from ovulating and therefore prevent pregnancy if she is or will soon ovulate and has had unprotected sex. The hormones in it are no different than those in regular birth control pills- the only difference is that there is a higher amount of them, the equivalent of taking several birth control pills at once (and indeed, it is possible to take regular birth control pills in such a way that they function as emergency contraception).
Claims that emergency contraception is an abortifacient are untrue. Pregnancy is defined by the medical establishment as implantation of a fertilized egg into the uterine lining; this is so because it is literally impossible to tell if a woman is pregnant or not before that. Pregnancy tests work by detecting the presence of the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), a glycoprotein that is secreted by the placenta shortly after fertilization. The placenta begins developing after the fertilized egg implants in a woman’s uterus, which happens about six days after conception, so the earliest we can know someone is pregnant is about six days post-conception. Emergency contraception cannot cause an implanted, fertilized egg to be rejected (even though at minimum, two-thirds of all human eggs fertilized during normal conception naturally either fail to implant at the end of the first week or later spontaneously abort).
Even if you define pregnancy as beginning at the point of fertilization, emergency contraception still could not be considered an abortifacient, as there is no evidence whatsoever that emergency contraception can cause a fertilized egg to be unable to attach to the uterine lining:
“According to experts, the primary (if not the sole) method of action of emergency contraception is to prevent ovulation. In 2004, a meta-analysis of scientific literature conducted by experts at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found that the contraceptive effects of a one-time dose of levonorgestrel, the active ingredient in emergency contraceptive pills, “involve either blockade or delay of ovulation”. In the same year, researchers at the Chilean Institute for Reproductive Medicine found that emergency contraceptive pills interfered with ovulation 82% of the time. Not coincidentally, EC is effective approximately 85% of the time if taken within seventy-two hours of unprotected sex… . Nor is there any evidence that if an egg has already been fertilized, EC will stop it from implanting in the womb and becoming a viable pregnancy.”
See Page 109, here: http://bit.ly/ksKN8U (Cristina Page’s “How The Pro-Choice Movement Saved America”).
This is also a wonderful article detailing how emergency contraception is not an abortifacient: http://belowthewaist.org/2010/01/thinking-ethically-about-emergency-contraception/
The abortion pill does exist, but it is not Plan B- the abortion pill is mifepristone, a progesterone receptor antagonist which works by blocking the receptors of the hormone progesterone in a woman’s body. Since progesterone is needed to maintain a pregnancy, taking mifepristone will end it, and then taking misoprostol will cause the expulsion of the embryo and all other pregnancy-related tissue.
Hope that helps!
Answer by Kevin
it contradicts our values, and our conscience, and our God. No. it is inconsistent. this is probably just vehement militant atheist appeasing material.
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