The True Face of Abortion Opponents

Sometimes, I gotta concentrate on work a little more than others. So, rather than doing something original, let me just point you toward another blog that goes by the name of Needlenose:

It will be most interesting to hear the reaction of anti-abortion groups to the FDA's decision yesterday to allow Plan-B "morning after" pills to be sold over the counter (limited to those over-18). The most often cited reason for these groups opposing anything related to abortion (clinics, pills, etc.) is that they are doing it to protect the life of a helpless child. But Plan-B contains doses of the hormone Progestin which prevents the release or fertilization of an egg. In other words it keeps a woman's reproductive system out of the reproductive lottery. Thanks to Science the whole raison d'etre of abortion groups is rendered moot.

No released eggs means no fertilization, no fetus, nothing. So this leaves these groups with three options:

1. Concede that science may have finally found a way to eliminate abortions, pack up their bags and go home.
2. Stick their fingers in their ears and go la la la la...
3. Admit that their objection isn't really to abortion, but to contraception -- or better yet, to people having sex.

Some of them are making a valiant attempt at a fourth option: to change the definition of an 'embryo' (i.e. what they're trying to protect) from a fertilized egg implanted in a woman's womb and undergoing cell division to a plain old fertilized egg, just floating around. The idea is that anything that gets in the way of this whole sperm + egg -> fertilization -> implantation -> cell-division process is tantamount to abortion and therefore qualifies as an object of their ire. But it's a real grasping at straws based on a single sentence in the manufacturer's fine print. Besides the FDA's decision to allow over-the-counter sales has let the cat out of the bag. Now they have to take a position that is consistent with the fact that abortion clinics may very well stop performing abortions altogether because nobody needs them any more.

That takes us back to the three options. I'm not holding my breath for #1 to happen any time soon and they can get away with #2 for only so long before they run out of air. Sooner or later they'll have to admit #3 -- that at the root of their objection is that they just hate it for unmarried people to have sex, that their blood starts boiling whenever they picture their daughter getting jiggy with the neighbor's son -- even if both of them are over eighteen.

That, of course, puts them on the same wavelength as the Taliban and the rest of the Sharia-loving crowd -- and if there's one thing that makes these people angrier than women exercising control over their own bodies, it's being compared to a bunch of Muslims.

So thanks Dr. Science, for driving a nice little wedge between these people and their nasty little judgemental causes and ripping away their thinly-veiled morality facade (oops, did I say veiled?)

I don't like abortions either. Nobody does. I wish they could be avoided altogether -- and it looks like they very well may be.