Next up, we'll repeal the law of gravity!

Awesome. Missorui--the "you can show me the evidence all you want, lalalalala I'm not listening" state--legislators have introduced a bill that would declare that emergency contraception causes abortions.

The bill also would protect pharmacies from lawsuits and from punishment by state regulators for refusing to sell or fill a prescription for any drug defined as triggering an abortion. Supporters said it would remove any financial incentive to sue the pharmacy’s owners for refusing to sell or stock an item that violated their conscience.
....
The bill applies specifically to two drugs: RU486, the early name for mifepristone, the drug administered in a doctor’s office to perform a nonsurgical abortion; and emergency contraception, which is marketed as Plan B.
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pharmacists are not allowed to dispense mifepristone, which must be administered by a doctor.

Okay, so the mifeprestone thing is just a distraction and an attempt to muddy the water. It's really a bill that "defines" *contraception* as *abortion*.

Plan B, which is effective up to about 100 hours after unprotected sexual intercourse, works primarily by preventing ovulation, the FDA says. If an egg has already been released, the drug also can prevent fertilization. And if fertilization has occurred, it can prevent the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus.

Susan Klein, a lobbyist for Missouri Right to Life, noted that the bill does not attempt to make emergency contraception illegal. . . .

Klein said her group considers emergency contraception a form of abortion because her members believe that pregnancy begins the moment an egg is fertilized. Plan B, therefore, can lead to the death of “an already-created human being” by blocking implantation in the uterus, she said.

Honey. You can *believe* whatever the hell you want. That don't make it so.

Plan B is contraception. It *prevents* abortion.

Plan B consists of two pills that contain a synthetic form of progesterone, one of the two main female hormones (the other is estrogen) that occur naturally and are used in birth control pills. Men, by the way, have progesterone too, though in lower doses. When you take Plan B—two pills twelve hours apart—you get a very large dose of progesterone that lasts for a day or two.

When a woman is pregnant, her body produces a lot of progesterone, which keeps her from ovulating—thereby preventing her from getting pregnant a second time and trying to carry them both, which would be a disaster. So progesterone prevents ovulation. Which, if you're a woman who doesn't want to get pregnant, is a pretty useful thing for it to do.

So let's say for some reason a woman who isn't on birth control finds herself with sperm floating around inside her: a condom broke, she was raped, she and her partner were sloppy and overly enthusiastic, whatever. If she's already ovulated within the last 24 hours, all she can do is cross her fingers: you can't stop something that's already happened. But if she hasn't, and is unlucky enough that she's just about to, she can take a big dose of progesterone that will stop her from popping an egg long enough for the sperm to die, and no pregnancy. Hurrah!

But, you ask, what if she's already ovulated, and the sperm luck out, and there's a zygote floating around but it hasn't yet stuck itself to the wall of the uterus? Would Plan B work then? And if it does, isn't that technically a kind of abortion?

Nope, and nope. If you've ovulated, the zygote either is or isn't going to be lucky enough to find a resting place. A lot of them don't, which is why pregnancy starts once the zygote takes root in the uterine lining. If you're not pregnant, you can't abort.

Okay, but. What if there's a zygote, and you personally see fertilization as the beginning point of life, even if it happens before pregnancy actually starts? If Plan B prevents implantation—and their own literature says they "may" do that—then that feels iffy to me.

This is the second thing that needs explaining. There is no evidence that Plan B prevents implantation. That's not a known effect of progesterone.

See also PZ Myers's posts on the same topic. He's an actual embryologist. Or you can see what The Well-Timed Period has to say; it's written by a real live ob/gyn.

And then go smack a member of the Missouri legislature upside the head.



Story courtesy Feministing.