Category: Contraception

Controversial Philippines bill may see action by month’s end

The Majority Leader in the Philippines House of Representatives and the House Speaker are reported to be in agreement that the controversial Reproductive Health Bill (RH Bill) should be voted on before a five week Congressional recess that begins on 23 March.[Philippine Star]

 

 

Erroneous assumptions illustrated by editorial

Sean Murphy*

In an editorial titled, “Birth Control: Now a human right,” the Charleston Gazette has expressed support for the Obama administrations regulation that will force objecting employers to provide insurance coverage for “contraceptive services.”  The editorial illustrates five common unexamined and questionable assumptions frequently made by opponents of freedom of conscience in health care.

  • First: it assumes that ‘birth control’ and ‘contraception’ are equivalent terms; they are not.
  • Second: it assumes that contraception is a form a health care, something that many objectors deny.
  • Third: in failing to recognize the distinction that objectors make between contraception and treating illness or injury, it draws the erroneous conclusion that they might refuse to treat sexually transmitted diseases.
  • Fourth: it asserts that birth control (by which it clearly means contraception) is a “human right,” although this has not been legally established.
  • Finally: it suggests that employers who do not pay for employees’ birth control are interfering with their freedom.

 

Family medicine physician forced out over contraceptives for unmarried patients

(USA: 2008)

  • Freedom2Care.org | Brief examples that demonstrate the often subtle, sometimes flagrant and increasingly pervasive discrimination faced by pro-life, faith-based and conscience-driven individuals in the healthcare professions. Full Text

Dawson’s licence revoked for sexual misconduct

Physician who refused birth control to unmarried had sex with patient

 Sean Murphy*

On 9 May, 2005, the Discipline Committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario revoked Dr. Dawson’s registration as a physician for having engaged in the sexual abuse of a married female patient. He was ordered to appear before a panel to be reprimanded and to pay costs to the College in the amount of $2,500.00. A  summary of the judgement is available on the College website. [Full text]

Some corrections and clarifications

Project letter to the Calgary Herald

Sean Murphy*

While I am pleased to see that Laura Wershler is willing to accommodate freedom of conscience among health care workers, I must correct some misleading statements included in her article (“The morning after: Pro-life agenda misrepresents the emergency contraceptive pill, or ECP”,Calgary Herald, 13 February, 2004).

In the first place, http://www.consciencelaws.org is the URL of the Protection of Conscience Project, not “Repression of Conscience”. Contrary to Ms. Wershler’s assertion, this is a non-denominational human rights project, not a not a pro-life initiative. Pro-lifers are interested in the Project and sometimes link to our website, but the Project does not take a position on the morality of controversial procedures. It is enough to recognize the controversy, and advocate the accommodation of conscientious objectors. At least one pro-life pharmacist does not use the Project pamphlet about the morning-after pill precisely because the pamphlet does not argue against its use.

Second, Ms. Wershler’s article incorrectly attributes to the Project the use of the terms “abortion drug” and “emergency contraceptive (ECP)”. The Project does not use either term, except when quoting other sources. They are confusing, and complicate articulation of freedom of conscience issues.

“Abortion drug” is an appropriate description of mifepristone (RU486), which is designed specifically to cause the abortion of an embryo that has implanted in the uterus. The morning-after pill has not been designed for that purpose, and does not act in that way.

“Emergency contraception” is a fabulously successful marketing term. However, 94% of the women who take the morning-after pill do not require it to prevent childbirth. This statistic, provided by the drug’s advocates,[1] belies the notion of ’emergency’ that is often used to browbeat conscientious objectors. As to “contraceptive”, Ms.Wershler herself acknowledges that these drugs have three mechanisms of action, one of which may prevent implantation of the early embryo, thus causing its death. This is considered by many conscientious objectors to be the moral equivalent of abortion, a term acknowledged as appropriate by some authorities,[2] though the usage is not uncontested. The Project refers to these drugs generically as the ‘morning-after pill’ because this term is widely understood. We describe the morning-after pill as “potentially abortifacient”, in the sense that it may cause the death of the early embryo, but does not necessarily do so.

A final note to prevent further confusion: the meaning of “abortifacient” in a medical or scientific context is not the same as its meaning in a moral context. In a medical context, a drug that prevents fertilization (acts contraceptively) 95 to 99 times out of a hundred would be called a contraceptive rather than a abortifacient. But in a moral context, when the outcome may be death, a drug may be treated as an abortifacient if there is even a 1% chance of it killing the embryo by preventing implantation. A number of disputes that arise about the morning-after pill are a regrettable consequence of failing to recognize these distinctions.

Notes

1. Apply a calculator to the following statement: “In 16 months of ECP services, pharmacists provided almost 12,000 ECP prescriptions, which is estimated to have prevented about 700 unintended pregnancies.” Cooper, Janet, Brenda Osmond and Melanie Rantucci, “Emergency Contraceptive Pills- Questions and Answers”. Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal, June 2000, Vol. 133, No. 5, at p. 28.

2. Keith L. Moore and T.V.N. Persaud, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (6th ed.) (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1998), p. 532. Quoted in Irving, Diane N., A “One-Act Drama:The Early Human Embryo:’Scientific’ Myths and Scientific Facts:Implications for Ethics and Public Policy, Medicine and Human Dignity.” International Bioethics Conference, ‘Conceiving the Embryo’, Centre Culturel, Woluwe-St. Pierre, Brussels, Belgium: October 20, 2002 (9:30 A.M.)(Revised 23 October, 2002) Note 23.