The GOP is not the only one with a birth control problem
A response to Jessica Valenti's article, "The GOP's Problem with Birth Control"
From that article,
"But, as Abortion, Every Day pointed out, the legislation these GOP women proposed ended up adopting anti-abortion movement language that defines pregnancy as beginning at fertilization rather than implantation. (That distinction is what conservatives rely on to falsely assert that IUDs and emergency contraception end pregnancies.)"
This looms as a disingenuous accusation. If defining pregnancy as beginning at fertilization instead of implantation is anti-abortion language, then also defining pregnancy as beginning at implantation instead of fertilization is pro-choice language. The argument becomes perfectly symmetric, suggesting both are covering up the issue. Also, if emergency contraception does not have potential as an abortifacient, then why the significance of how one defines when pregnancy begins?
We need a better understanding of how hormones work in the female end of sexual reproduction. This is a highly complicated affair, there are two significant hormonal contingencies we are seeing currently in the news. The first is miscarriages, where the woman's body ejects a pregnancy that has failed early. The woman's body does this, and it's not hard to see why this is necessary. Gestation is a complicated and delicate process. Statistics suggest that even under the best circumstances, things can go wrong early in the pregnancy, gestation can break down completely and the gestating tissue risks decomposition and other problems that threaten the health of the host and has to be kicked out. Women are currently being criminalized for something their body needs to be able to do. The conviction that during miscarriage their pregnancy is a person threatened by the woman is a real absurdity. What is the role of a woman's hormones in miscarriages?
The other contingency is where gestation has proceeded effectively in terms of its relationship with the host, but the gestation is suffering from massive mutations resulting in catastrophic disorders or morphologies that mean the neonate will not survive or suffer severe birth defects. In this case even if the pregnancy is quite late and gestation is nearly complete to a neonate, it is cruel to both the woman and the neonate to allow the pregnancy to proceeds to childbirth. Abortion in this case can be induced with hormones, but how is normal at-term child birth triggered? We should assume hormones are involved.
The other two contingencies are the easiest to understand. There is menstruation, when a woman has an ova ready to be fertilized and has not been fertilized. And there is pregnancy where a woman has been successfully fertilized and gestation is proceeding. Both circumstances are easily imagined to have some hormonal regime to communicate between all the features of her reproductive anatomy so they can participate accordingly.
Manipulating these hormonal regimes is the key to a woman managing her fertility for the purposes of advancing sexual relations outside of sexual reproduction. Clearly some understanding exists among those providing biochemistry available for doing this. This knowledge needs to better disseminated to the public and not just how to use them, but how and why they work.
So we have four basic questions to answer regarding the role of hormones in a woman's reproductive cycles in these circumstances,
The woman is not fertilized, menstruation
The woman is fertilized, pregnancy
The woman is pregnant, gestation fails early, miscarriage
The woman is pregnant, gestation succeeds and advances to term, childbirth
And we need to confront and eliminate the prevarication around about what qualifies as the beginning of a pregnancy. It makes very little sense removing fertilization as the source of the beginning of a pregnancy. That moment where a sperm penetrates the surface of an ova and dumps its DNA to join with that of the ova's is high drama. It is justifiably a popular understanding of one of the more remarkable discoveries of modern science in the field of biology. It also makes little sense to believe that a fertilized ova that has not even implanted to the side of the uterus of the pregnant woman deserves the moral and legal respect as a person. Everybody needs to get real about what is real and not just what we feel we need to be real.
Sounds like perhaps you are a physician or other advanced degree holder. I’m a retired ICU/OR/ER nurse, 41 yrs at it. Yes, we always need more science, but the basic premise that I see this issue from is that no one in this supposedly free country has the right to shove their specific religious beliefs down my throat, nor make laws governing my behavior based on their religion.
I’m sure you’ve seen/heard Nikki Haley’s ridiculous stumbling around what caused the Civil War? In both her original silly answer & then the following race to clean up the mess, she mentioned personal freedoms & people not needing the govt telling them what they can & cannot do - her words; & yet she will turn around & say she would ban abortion nationwide if given the opportunity.
Such hypocrisy is mind boggling.
Paul, Perhaps you should watch the MSNBC 1 hour special “Periodicals.”
I believe you will learn from that that physicians & biochemists already do have a pretty vast knowledge of the female hormones & which ones are increasing or decreasing at each point in the menstrual cycle.
The same is true during the gestational stage although this film didn’t go into that stage as much because this film was more about how normal & natural the menstrual cycle is & how women have been shamed & even demonized due to it.