Why is Plan B Emergency Contraception being opposed by Pro-lifers?

Time and Time again, the rightwingers attempt to define Plan B as abortifacient. It is NOT abortifacient, and should not be opposed by pro-lifers on those terms. This is a great example of those who let their religious beliefs trump practicality. Unfortunatley Democrats For Life of America has caved.

BTW, I am quite spritual and do not practice artificial birth control. As a traditional Catholic, my spiritual life guides all of my actions, I am spiritual because I am pro-life; I am not pro-life because I am spiritual. Being consistemtly pro-life needs no support from a religious standpoint. There are a myriad of other reasons that a pro-life position is ethically sound without having to be morally sound too (although it is obviously morally sound).

Pasted Below From The Washington Post; it can be found at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/28/AR2006022801027_pf.html Posted below according to "Fair Use".

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When Politics Defeats Science
By Susan F. Wood

Wednesday, March 1, 2006; A17

Since my resignation six months ago as assistant commissioner of women's health at the Food and Drug Administration, I have been traveling around the country meeting with men and women, fellow scientists and health care professionals. I have shared my concerns that our federal health agencies seem increasingly unable to operate independently and that this lack of independence compromises their mission of promoting public health and welfare.

At every stop I am reminded that whether it is the environment, energy policy, science education or public health, the American public expects our government to make the best decisions based on the best available evidence.

Yet, at a recent hearing of the House Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human services, we saw once again that this is not happening. Reps. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) questioned FDA acting commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach about the delay inapproving the application to make Plan B emergency contraception available over the counter to women 17 and older. Von Eschenbach responded that the agency was carefully reviewing the thousands of comments received in response to last-minute concerns raised about the feasibility of making the same product available over the counter for most women but keeping it on prescription for young teens. This exchange confirmed my suspicion that, like his predecessor, von Eschenbach is unable or unwilling to let the science and the scientists guide FDA policy and decisions, and that the real answer as to whether the FDA will allow Plan B over the counter for those 17 and older is no.

Time and again in my travels I am asked, "What happened to derail Plan B?" I have to answer honestly that I don't know. The manufacturer agreed to take the "controversial" issue of young teens' access to emergency contraception off the table in 2004; now we are talking only about adult access to safe and effective contraception. Over 98 percent of adult women have used some form of contraception. So what is the objection? Perhaps it is that posed by a small but vocal political minority that insists on labeling emergency contraception as abortion, or at least confusing the two. One of the main questions I hear is, "Does this pill cause an abortion?" In fact, the only connection this pill has with abortion is that it has the potential to prevent the need for one.

Emergency contraceptive pills work exactly the same way as other birth control pills, and they do not interfere with or harm an existing pregnancy. Emergency contraception is simply a higher dose of daily birth control pills; it is not RU-486, the "abortion pill." Indeed, emergency contraception has been used as a method to prevent unintended pregnancies for decades by women who had physicians advise them on how many pills in their regular pill pack to take. So people who are comfortable with oral contraceptives as methods of contraception should be just as comfortable with emergency contraception.

Having spent 15 years working for the federal government, nearly five of which were at the FDA, I care deeply about what's happening in the federal agencies, particularly our health agencies. Nearly 25 cents of every consumer dollar is spent on products regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. We count on the FDA for the safety and effectiveness of our medicines, vaccines and medical devices, and for the safety of the blood and food supply. The American public does not want to -- nor should it -- have to think twice about the quality and reliability of information it is getting from the FDA. Its reputation as the international gold standard for regulatory agencies, and as a body that sets the bar very high when it comes to scientific evidence and integrity, is being put at risk over adult access to contraception. Why would the administration risk such a reputation over this?

Von Eschenbach could demonstrate his commitment to the FDA's independence and scientific integrity and help restore staff morale and waning public credibility by stopping the rulemaking process and approving access to Plan B for women 17 and older. Instead, he continues to hide behind a wasteful and pointless bureaucratic process. Congress needs to step in and restore the FDA's independence and its ability to make decisions based on the evidence.

It's been nearly three years since the first application came in to make Plan B emergency contraception available over the counter, so that women, including rape victims, could have a second chance to prevent an unintended pregnancy and the need for an abortion. How many chances have we missed? I still can't explain what is going on here, and why women 17 and older are still denied this product in a timely way. When did adult access to contraception become controversial? And why have we allowed it to happen?

The Religious Right Opposes vaccinations to prevent Cervical Cancer!

Below is yet more evidence that the religious right is neither religious, nor right. They actually oppose universal innoculation of children against the Human Pappiloma Virus (the virus implicated as the cause for cervical cancer).

The oppose this under the guise that it sends the wrong message to children about sex and abstinence since HPV is spread by genital contact. They completely miss the point because HPV is so common that a woman may actually pick this virus up from her husband even if she had been chaste before marriage! People can get HPV outside of sexual contact too! Why does the religious right put their distorted, fake moral standards above saving lives?

Read below and see for yourself.

Article pasted below can be found at:
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=registration.sojomail&returnURL=action%3Dsojomail%2Edisplay%26issue%3D060301

Pasted here according to "Fair Use".

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The Religious Right's vaccination vexation
by David Batstone

When it comes to teen sex, all parents hope and pray that their children make wise choices.

Children as young as 12 or 13 weigh decisions with consequences that could impact the rest of their lives in a dramatic way. At this point in the conversation our teenage children roll their eyes, but parents know the risks to be real.

Parental anxiety therefore is unavoidable, all the more so because they realize that the ultimate choices their teens make about sex are beyond their control. That begs a question: If a child violates the moral code that parents set, are those parents willing to put their child's life in mortal danger? Tragically, some Christians are willing to answer, "Yes."

A little-known debate is smoldering at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that may burst soon into a major fire. Two pharmaceutical companies - Merck and GlaxoSmithKline - have designed a cervical cancer vaccine. In clinical trials the Merck drug, Gardasil, is proving to be up to 100% effective in fighting the dominant strain of the virus causing cervical cancer. The pharmaceutical companies and a growing movement of public health advocates want all girls to be inoculated with the vaccine as they presently are for other high-risk viruses.

The Family Research Council is leading a charge of Religious Right groups to halt any such national inoculation program. Their resistance is driven by fear more than common sense. The human papilloma virus (HPV) that generates cervical cancer is most typically passed along through genital contact with others. So as long as an individual does not engage in sexual intercourse, he or she should be shielded from the virus. The Religious Right bloc concludes that offering a vaccine for HPV would undercut their promotion of sexual abstinence for adolescents.

In that spirit, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, told Fortune magazine that he would not allow his 13-year-old daughter to be inoculated. "It sends the wrong message," Perkins said. "Our concern is that this vaccine will be marketed to a segment of the population that should be getting a message about abstinence."

Globally, cervical cancer kills more than 270,000 women each year - roughly 80% of them in developing countries. The Centers for Disease Control reports that as many as 3,700 women in the U.S. died of cervical cancer last year, and tens of thousands more had their lives completely transformed by a radical treatment regimen for the disease. The majority of those women are African-American or Hispanic, and poor.

Religious Right groups are not seeking to ban the drug. They simply do not want the vaccine to be slotted as an inoculation that every child receives as they presently do for polio and smallpox.
Because these groups link cervical cancer so intimately with illicit sexual activity, a mandated vaccination feels to them like a family values choice would be imposed upon them by the state.
We abide by public health standards for the sake of the common good, of course. In the U.S., we require motorists to wear seat belts and children to be inoculated. It would be equally shortsighted to oppose a vaccine for HIV if one existed. So the question here is whether the transmission of HPV is a universal public health risk. The question of state imposition is a straw man argument.

But more importantly, the Religious Right is wrong to so closely tie cervical cancer to promiscuity. A woman might be chaste her entire life, then marry and pick up the virus from her husband. It also is more than a bit naïve to believe that a child will abandon abstinence once they have received a vaccine. If a teen's only deterrent for engaging in sexual activity is a fear of communicable diseases, they are likely to turn to sex with protective devices.

I would go a step further and challenge the Religious Right to temper their moral commitments with grace. It is the right and duty for parents to set a moral path for their children. It pains me that so many parents abdicate that responsibility. But we also offer protection and mercy for lapses in judgment.

It is a daring journey raising children. It is our role to guide, model, and protect. Parents teach values, but kids make the decisions. I would hope that love and grace await our children at each destination.

When Condoms are not Contraception

Please read this excellent article describing the Catholic Church's teaching regarding contraception.

The philosophy of the church is much deeper than what most people get into. People of faith deepen their faith when they discern issues with the help of the holy spirit. Those who stay uninformed, underinformed or misinformed are missing out on a great oppourtunity to deepen faith and come closer to god.

The article pasted below can be found at http://www.beliefnet.com/story/183/story_18346_1.html

It is pasted here according to the doctrine of "Fair Use".

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The Catholic principle of 'double effect' allows an HIV-infected spouse to use them to prevent transmitting the virus.

By Jon D. Fuller and James F. Keenan

Catholics occasionally become stymied over whether or not condom use could ever be considered morally right. Catholic moral theologians, however, have been nearly unanimous in arguing not only that the Catholic tradition is not per se opposed to their use for disease prevention, but that Roman Catholic principles actually render condom use morally licit under some circumstances.

1. Is there any Catholic teaching on condoms? No. Catholic teaching prohibits contraceptive activity. Through the encyclicals "Humanae Vitae," and before that, "Casti Connubii," popes have taught that contraception is always wrong. For this reason anyone intending contraception, e.g. through withdrawal, condom use, IUD, or the pill, is always engaged in morally wrong activity, regardless of circumstances.

This does not mean that the Pill or condoms themselves were or are condemned, however. For instance, if a woman uses the birth control pill to regulate her menstrual cycle or dysfunctional uterine bleeding, that use of the Pill is morally permitted even though it may render her at least temporarily sterile. Just as the birth control pill can be used for purposes other than contraception, the condom can be used for non-contraceptive purposes. For example, consider a married couple, in which the husband is HIV-infected and the wife is post-menopausal. Condom use in this marriage would not be for contraceptive purposes, but rather to prevent a fatal infection from being transmitted from husband to wife.

2. What about condom use between spouses when one is infected and the wife is not yet post-menopausal?

Here, moral theologians turn to the principle of double effect. Since the 17th century, the principle of double effect has meant that an action with two effects, one right and one wrong, can be performed when the following four conditions are met:

a. The object of the action is not intrinsically wrong.b. The wrong effect, though foreseen, cannot be intended.c. The wrong effect cannot be the means to the right effect.d. There must be proportionate reason for allowing the wrong effect to occur.

A good illustratiion is the issue of administering high doses of painkillers to a terminally ill patient who is in pain. This issue has been widely cited and discussed, and its solution was sanctioned by Pope Pius XII. When we apply the principle of double effect, we see that the object of the activity, that is, administering pain relief to a terminally ill patient, is in itself morally right, but it has two effects: the relief of the patient's pain and the possible hastening of the patient's death through its unintended suppression of respiration, We may foresee the patient's possible death, but we cannot intend it. Similarly, we cannot kill the patient to relieve the patient's pain. The principle helps us to see that we can provide the patient with adequate pain relief, so long as we solely intend that effect and not the patient's death.

Just as morphine can be used to kill a patient or to alleviate a patient's pain, similarly a condom in a marriage in which one partner is infected and the wife is not post-menopausal can be used to prevent the transmission of HIV or to avoid a pregnancy. As many moral theologians have argued, this is a case of double effect. Though the condom's contraceptive effect can be foreseen, it is not intended. And just as a patient in pain is not denied pain relief in light of a foreseen but unintended effect, neither should a married couple be denied AIDS protection in consummating their conjugal love, even though the protection could be contraceptive.

In an interview in 2000 with the Catholic News Service, Franciscan Father Maurizio Faggioni, who is a physician, a professor of moral theology at Rome's Alphonsianum university and a consultant to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that condom use might be justified when one of the spouses has AIDS, as long as the "exclusive and primary" intent was to defend the healthy partner from infection and not to prevent pregnancy. "This is a classic application of the Catholic moral principle of double effect," he said.


3. Does every moral theologian agree with this position?

No. In a rather astonishing press release after the World AIDS Day meeting in December 2000, some other Vatican officials stated categorically that condoms could never be morally allowed. On the subject of married couples, Camillian Father Felice Ruffini, undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, said that within a marriage, even in which one partner is infected with HIV, condom use is always prohibited: "Certainly it's difficult, it's tough to be able to maintain matrimonial chastity in this case," but moralists cannot craft "an exception to Christ's law."

Also at the meeting, Bonifacio Honings of the Discalced Carmelites, a Dutch moral theologian for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said an HIV-infected husband had no right to request sexual relations from his healthy wife. Honinga added that the wife could choose to consent to sexual relations "to avoid a worse thing--her husband's becoming intractable, or the husband being unfaithful to her, etc," Honings's remarks are very disturbing. He effectively argues that the wife's life is less important than her husband becoming "intractable."
We have to ask: Why could this group of Vatican officials not recognize the validity of the previously described applications of traditional principles?

We also have to note--as did Dr. Dorothy Logee in reflecting on her own marriage with her husband, who became HIV-infected in the course of caring for patients in Africa--that in such marriages, the need for sexual intimacy is like other marriages where one partner has a life-threatening disease. The need and desire to express love through sexual intimacy may be even greater than when both partners are healthy.

Finally, mercy is a critically important guiding principle in our Catholic tradition. Mercy is the willingness to enter into the chaos of another, as the Good Samaritan did. The gospels make it clear that mercy is the standard by which we will all be judged. In this time of a worldwide AIDS epidemic, one could argue that this is the principle which should be our guiding beacon.