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Shocker: Anti-Choicers Lie.

Jill

An email from the Family Institute of Connecticut:

Help Stop Attack on Christian Hospitals

On October 1st a law will go into effect in Connecticut that may force Christian hospitals to provide chemical abortions. The Family Institute of Connecticut may still be able to stop this outrageous attack on religious liberty-with your help.

We are looking for plaintiffs who would be willing to work with us in suing Connecticut for the unconstitutionality, on its face, of the so-called “Act Concerning Compassionate Care for Victims of Sexual Assault”. We are specifically looking for hospital technicians, nurses, doctors and other hospital personnel whose exercise of religious beliefs would be burdened by the implementation of this bill. The act requires that in the event of any “emergency treatment”, which means any medical examination or treatment provided in a licensed health care facility to a victim of sexual assault, the services set out in the statute must be provided.

Except the legislation isn’t about abortion at all — it’s about providing emergency contraception to rape survivors.

Many Christians object to providing emergency “contraception” under these circumstances which includes Plan B, also known as the “morning after pill”, because Plan B may bring about an abortion. We are looking for individuals who work for hospitals who believe that this contraceptive procedure violates their religious beliefs. The basis of the suit is that the First Amendment rights of these individuals are being violated under the Free Exercise Clause and that Connecticut’s RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) is also violated because the exercise of those persons’ religious beliefs are being burdened without a compelling state interest or the use by the state of the least restrictive means of meeting their goals ( i.e. no alternative is provided for those whose beliefs are offended.)

Yes, Christians are horribly offended that they’re being required to offer emergency contraception to rape victims. They aren’t being forced to perform abortions. They aren’t being asked do anything other than offer a medication that may prevent a rape victim from being impregnated by her attacker — a medication that may prevent her from having an abortion later on.

But since when do “pro-life” groups actually care about preventing abortion?

Thanks to Matt for the link.

43 thoughts on Shocker: Anti-Choicers Lie.

  1. It’s kind of a Catch-22: Right-wingers say that women shouldn’t be able to have abortions because they made the decision to have sex, and therefore assumed the responsibility to carry the child to term — but even when someone else makes the decision to impregnate a girl against her will, she’s still got to carry the child to term whether she wants to or not.

    ‘Cause by God, if someone rapes a woman, she better stay raped!

  2. It’s nice how a little word-play conveniently makes things seem so much more dramatic, right? Who cares if we bend the truth to get our point across!

    Now bending the truth to avoid conflict and protect the families of your contractors, a la the Aurora Planned Parenthood, is an entirely different story…

    end sarcasm.

  3. Yes, Christians are horribly offended that they’re being required to offer emergency contraception to rape victims. They aren’t being forced to perform abortions. They aren’t being asked do anything other than offer a medication that may prevent a rape victim from being impregnated by her attacker – a medication that may prevent her from having an abortion later on.

    Actually, I grew up with a number of these people…I knew a Christian doctor that would not give her patients regular old birth control because if they did take it, and happened to get pregnant while on it, but didn’t know it and continued to take it, there was like a .0000056% chance that it maybe possibly might could cause an “abortion”…i.e., the body to reject the itty bitty miscroscopic fertilized egg (LIFE!!! HUMAN LIFE!!!) that was purposely put there by God’s little helper the stork and also a man-sword of sexual justice.

    It’s another ridiculous example of Christians missing the point. ..yet again. And also, ignoring science.

  4. If anybody ever tries that with me I’m going to ask them which abortion clinic is paying them to drum up business for them.

    ‘Cause even if someone thinks Plan B can cause abortion, it also prevents conception over the next three days or so—in other words, it would be an “abortion” only if the woman had already conceived, whereas if she were going to get a normal abortion if she got pregnant, not taking EC would make her more likely to get pregnant and therefore more likely to have that abortion. Thus, denial of EC is more likely to lead to an abortion than use of EC—but like Jill said, since when do anti-choicers care about little details like that.

    The standard anti-EC position manages to translate to “more abortions are preferable if I can have slightly less culpability in causing them so I can pretend my hands are clean.” Who cares about a reality you’ll never have to deal with when you can pat yourself on the back and pretend you’ve just saved a baby?

  5. If they want to complain about “attacks on Christian hospitals” they should really have the decency to stop pretending to be a safe and useful place for rape victims to go and get the best care.

  6. Typical anti-choicers, they only care about life inside the womb. Everyone outside the womb is shit out of luck.

  7. It’s been a while since I’ve been a christian, but not so long that I’ve forgotten that lying is a sin, no matter what good you’re trying to bring about as a result of that lie.

  8. because the exercise of those persons’ religious beliefs are being burdened without a compelling state interest

    So, making sure women who have been raped get appropriate medical care is not a “compelling state interest”?

  9. Am I the only one who finds it weird that they didn’t say “Catholic”? There are very few “Christian” hospitals operating in the US. Mostly they’re Catholic hospitals. But they can’t say “Catholic” (or, worse, “Roman Catholic”) because they’ll lose a big chunk of their base who think that Catholics aren’t real Christians and won’t be motivated to defend them.

  10. Even if emergency contraception did actually regularly destroy fertilized eggs which of course are exactly the same as human beings, health workers have a responsibility to provide the services their patients need. I have to admit, requiring doctors to perform any type of surgery against their will seems to be a bit inappropriate–they wouldn’t do it very well, for one thing–but this isn’t happening here. Their wording is ridiculously deceptive and their ethics, of course, vile.

  11. I’m unclear about the EC facts. Does EC *ever* work after the relese of an egg by preventing implanation? Does it work this way more often than ordinary birth contol?

  13. Does EC *ever* work after the relese of an egg by preventing implanation?

    No.

    Does it work this way more often than ordinary birth contol?

    It works that way less often than ordinary birth control.

    Please feel free to ignore these scientific facts as you always do.

  15. Chad:

    Ordinary bc pills put a woman’s body into a psuedo pregnancy by preventing ovulation, thus preventing pregnancy. No egg, no baby.

    EC prevents implantation of fertilized egg. No implantation, no baby.

    Why is this hard?

  16. Here’s the thing that I can’t get past.

    Why is it their “rights” being violated when no one is making them take the EC or get an abortion, but instead, they are applying their religious morality upon another human being?

    The only person’s rights being violated in this scenario in my layperson’s pov are the patient. The doctor/nurse/medical professional is hindering her ability to receive any and all care available for her treatment by applying his/her religious mores to someone who may or may not share those beliefs.

  17. Mnemosyne, Fransler, I’m really curious, I’m not trying to be a dick. And I don’t have any idea what religious beliefs you’re talking about, Mnemosyne.

    The link provided, which was the “answer” provided in the previous thread, did not address the issue clearly as far as I could tell. The blogger at that link said that EC works before pregnancy, and that it normally works by supressing ovulation. He sums up by saying “Plan B is not an abortion. Plan B doesn’t help if one is already pregnant, and it doesn’t affect any implanted zygotes.” Yeah, but does it prevent implantation, say, if the egg had already been released before the woman takes EC? He doesn’t really say as far as I can tell.

    Also, what Mnemosyne said is inconsistent with what houseofmayhem said in comment 13, so it looks like I’m not the only one who is unclear on these issues–one of you is as well.

    Now, can someone give me an answer without insulting me?

  18. damnit I am SO FUCKING SICK of people saying that birth control and emergency contraception kill. even if these folks think life begins at fertilization, they’re still wrong on this one.

  19. It’s kind of a Catch-22: Right-wingers say that women shouldn’t be able to have abortions because they made the decision to have sex, and therefore assumed the responsibility to carry the child to term — but even when someone else makes the decision to impregnate a girl against her will, she’s still got to carry the child to term whether she wants to or not.

    The thing is, deep down, the anti-sex brigade don’t feel there is that much of a difference between extramarital sex (because of course that’s the only kind of sex that leads to abortions — every married woman wants to keep popping out kids ’til it kills her, natch) and rape. In their minds, both are situations in which the woman has failed in her divinely mandated mission to safeguard her vagina for her future husband’s exclusive use.

  20. Chad-

    EC, like birth control, works in a variety of ways: It prevents implantation; it thickens cervical mucus so that sperm can’t pass through; and it thins the uterine lining so that a fertilized egg can’t implant. As others have pointed out, recent studies suggest that EC is less effective on the last point than standard BC.

    Here’s the catch: Pregnancy doesn’t begin until the egg implants. Abortion can’t happen until a pregnancy is established. EC cannot dislodge an implanted egg or cause abortion. So even if EC does prevent a fertilized egg from implanting, that still isn’t abortion. Anti-choicers are twisting medical fact to suit their aims.

    So why implantation and not fertilization to define when pregnancy begins? There are a few reasons, but chief among them is because more than half of all fertilized eggs don’t implant naturally — no one really knows why, they just don’t attach and they get flushed out. So if pregnancy begins at conception, that’s a lot of miscarriages. It’s also impossible to diagnose a pregnancy before implantation — a fertilized egg won’t show up on a pregnancy test. Fertilization has never been considered the same as pregnancy until this debate started. Anti-choicers are re-defining the terms to suit their own ends.

    I can understand that some women may not want to use birth control if there’s even some small chance that it’ll prevent a fertilized egg from implanting (and there is a tiny, tiny chance that BC works that way, if the two other safe-guards happen to fail — again, I need to stress how rare this is). That’s their right. But I don’t think it’s right for health care professionals to deny women care based upon a scientifically unproven possibility that EC might prevent a fertilized egg from implanting. Especially if the counter-balancing argument involves a woman being impregnated against her will.

  21. It’s nice how a little word-play conveniently makes things seem so much more dramatic, right? Who cares if we bend the truth to get our point across!

    Now bending the truth to avoid conflict and protect the families of your contractors, a la the Aurora Planned Parenthood, is an entirely different story…

    end sarcasm.

    I’d say there’s a pretty big difference between lying in order to deny rape victims health care, and attempting to avoid protesting, boycotting and potential violence when you’re building a new health care clinic.

    If reproductive health clinics weren’t regularly attacked, if the people who built those clinics weren’t harassed and stalked, and if doctors and volunteers weren’t assaulted and killed, Planned Parenthood would have been able to put its name on that lease. Unfortunately, “pro-lifers” are such a threat that they have to engage in practices usually reserved for more competitive industries (yes, this is standard practice used by restaurants and retailers who don’t want their construction projects publicized to competitors).

  22. Thanks Jill. So you’re saying that, given a fertilized egg in the system, it is more likely to be flushed out if the woman has been on ordinary BC than if she takes EC. But (as people have pointed out here) it is extremely rare for a woman who has been on ordinary BC to have a fertilized egg in her system, whereas it seems far more likely for there to be a fertilized egg in the system of a woman taking EC. Right? So even if EC is less effective (ceteris parabis) at preventing by means of implantation a higher percentage of cases *in which EC prevented anything* would be cases in which it prevented implanation. Does that seem right?

  23. “Help Stop Attack on Christian Hospitals”

    I about died laughing the minute I saw that. Not good for my sore throat, my only means of breathing right now, and certainly not good for my headache. Ah, at least I’m not nauseated, right? And I had a good laugh in spite of my illness!

  24. Jill, I knew that anti-choice terrorists lie. They are pretty blatant and flagrant in their lies. I hope the new law goes into effect in the Huskie State (Connecticut).

  25. @ Jill

    I was being sarcastic, and what I typed doesn’t actually make sense the way it did in my head:

    I think EC’s great, and since it bugs me that it’s so poorly understood by women in general (through no fault of their own, mind you) it makes me absolutely furious when people are spreading outright lies about it to further their fundamentalist purposes. And it’s sick to deny rape victims a means of not concieving their attacker’s child. These people, in the face of nothing but evidence to the contrary, continue to lie about what EC actually does and spin it to elicit emotional responses from people. In their mind it’s ok.

    I only recently moved from the Aurora area, and since I still know a lot of people, family and friends included, who could potentially benefit from PP I can’t believe how they’ve been kept from opening. My dad is one of the protesters who believes PP does nothing else than solicit abortions. It’s just amazing how people have constructed such elaborate lies (they brainwash you! they force abortions! fetus lipstick!) that they’re perfectly ok with, but cry foul when a business takes legitimate precautions to protect itself.

    Sorry for the mixup.

  26. Originally posted by Jill:

    If reproductive health clinics weren’t regularly attacked, if the people who built those clinics weren’t harassed and stalked, and if doctors and volunteers weren’t assaulted and killed, Planned Parenthood would have been able to put its name on that lease. Unfortunately, “pro-lifers” are such a threat that they have to engage in practices usually reserved for more competitive industries (yes, this is standard practice used by restaurants and retailers who don’t want their construction projects publicized to competitors).

    Ding ding ding!!! Glad to know that someone borrowed my talking points. We need more people who care about women’s freedoms using my talking points. The anti-choicers are the real terrorists and the real threat to democracy.

  27. Yeah, but does it prevent implantation, say, if the egg had already been released before the woman takes EC? He doesn’t really say as far as I can tell.

    Sorry, Jill and houseofmayhem, but both of you guys are behind the times on EC. There is no evidence that EC prevents implantation. None. There’s always been a theoretical possibility that maybe regular birth control can prevent implantation, and that theory has been applied to EC as well, but there has never been any actual evidence that it’s the case, and the most recent evidence is that it’s not the case and that neither version of the Pill prevents implantation, whether you use it as daily contraception or EC. See my second link, which explains it well for all of us laypeople.

    (If you implant an IUD as EC, then it works by preventing implantation, but surgically implanting an IUD and taking a series of birth control pills is completely different and shouldn’t be conflated.)

    Chad, the only possible reason for someone to think that a fertilized egg is a fully developed human being is religious belief. Unless you’re a close follower of Aristotle and think that there have been no advances in medical science in the intervening 3,000 years since the days when he theorized that each sperm is a miniature human being, there is no rational reason to think that a fertilized egg is equivalent to a zygote, much less a fully developed human infant.

  28. EC prevents implantation of fertilized egg. No implantation, no baby.

    No! Wrong! To summarise the Pharyngula article linked up there, in lay language: EC prevents an unfertilised egg from being released by the ovarian follicle. It works exactly analogously to a male condom, by preventing the release of the female gamete into the reproductive tract.

    The main constituent of EC is progrestrone, which is also what they give women who have just had IVF, to help ensure that the fertilised egg will implant. In other words, if there already is a fertilised egg there, EC makes it somewhat more likely that the woman will become pregnant.

    However, if the woman has not already ovulated, EC helps prevent ovulation (by changing the woman’s hormonal balance) for long enough for any unwanted sperm in her reproductive tract to die, or become incapable of fertilising a released egg.

    In other words, not only is it not an “abortion,” it’s actually more accurately described as a “chemical condom.”

  29. Mnemosyne’s comment #26 about the lack of evidence that EC prevents implantation can’t be emphasized enough. Whether pregnancy begins at fertilization or implantation, though not unimportant in general (sorry for the double negative), *doesn’t matter* when discussing EC. Belaboring the definition of pregnancy implies that EC is known to prevent implantation.

    Oh, and I assumed when reading Dr. Myer’s blog entry that he didn’t talk directly to the point of whether EC prevents implantation because of the lack of evidence either way. He also didn’t address the issue of whether EC could work by prompting the immune system to destroy the fertilized egg (/scientist snark).

  30. Expanding on what Mnemosyne said, If you look at the thread on that Pharyngula link, people discuss whether EC can prevent implantation. Specifically this comment cites two papers that show that levonorgestrel (the active ingredient in EC) does not interfere with a fertilized egg (in monkeys and rats but, you know, it’s hard to do this research in humans).

  31. Mnemosyne, I have not advocated, nor do I hold, the belief that a fertilized egg is a fully developed human being, or even a less-than-human thing with moral standing.

  32. And here’s another paper that discusses studies in humans that concludes EC does not prevent implantation. The link to this paper also came from a comment in the Pharyngula thread, by the way.

  33. Mnemosyne, I have not advocated, nor do I hold, the belief that a fertilized egg is a fully developed human being, or even a less-than-human thing with moral standing.

    So your argument against emergency contraception is … what, again?

    If you’re arguing in favor of health care workers being allowed to impose their religious beliefs on patients who don’t share those beliefs, that’s a totally different argument. If that’s the case, then a nurse or doctor who’s a Jehovah’s Witness should be legally permitted to deny you a blood transfusion because it’s against their religion, right?

  34. Holy shit, Mnemosyne, when did I ever make an argument against emergency contraception?! That’s right, I never did!

  36. I don’t know your history as a commenter, Chad, but it might help you to understand Mnemosyne’s comments to know that the questions you’re asking very closely resemble the tactics of someone who is about to get into a huge semantic debate to prove some obscure point that will magically win the argument because other people get tired of splitting hairs.

    I don’t know if that’s what you’re doing, and I hope it isn’t … although I do have to wonder why you’re asking here of all places when you have the whole internet at your disposal. It’s nothing personal — it’s just that after a while as a blogger you start to recognise certain patterns that trolls, even polite ones, employ and you learn to guard against them by treating them with sarcasm and disdain.

    Also, whatever history you -do- have as a commenter is going to affect how others perceive you here. It appears that you have something of a negative reputation already, so making inflammatory statements (#31) is only going to make things worse.

    On topic … ugh. This ignorant determination to equate the distribution of emergency contraception with abortion is just sickening. You’d think that if these people hated science and logic so much they’d refuse to have anything to do with it, instead of trying to twist it to their own ends.

  37. It’s a bit upsetting to see all this discussion of whether EC prevents implantation, or whether pregnancy begins at fertilisation or implantation. Of course I see why people are doing it, and yes, it’s important not to let crazies go around redefining words and reinventing science however suits them.

    It’s just that… WHO WOULD CARE IF IT DID PREVENT IMPLANTATION? The crazies don’t care what’s actually true or not; they just have an anti-woman agenda. All the discussion about the technicalities seems to somehow be legitimising the idea that a single-celled organism could, under some other circumstances which don’t happen to be true in this reality, have rights which cancel out the rights of an actual person.

    (can I just say that chad’s “I’m not touching you” commenting style is very annoying? *bats eyelashes at the bloggers, especially zuzu*)

  38. Another awesome post from Feministe. Instead of commenting(which would be insanely long), I’m going to post on my site and link to your thread. Thank you and thanks for the great blogging Jill…even way far away in Germany:)

  39. do you have a link for the call for plaintiffs that was in that email? it’s not posted on their website, as far as i can see…

    and, question for the law student: would a prima facie case actually work here, anyway? i mean, assuming they had a case at all, which they don’t…but theoretically, could this law, as it’s written, even be challenged on its face, the way they’re hoping to?

  40. From the Journal of American Medical Association (the last link above):

    “Does Plan B Prevent Fertilization or Interrupt Fallopian Tube Function? No data are available on whether Plan B directly interferes with fertilization itself. However, since fertilization occurs in the fallopian tube, Plan B could indirectly prevent pregnancy by interrupting the transport of fertilized ova through the fallopian tube. In that case the use of Plan B should be associated with an increased risk of ectopic pregnancy. Combined data from 5 clinical trials involving nearly 6000 women showed the actual rate of ectopic pregnancies in women who had used Plan B to be 1.02%, which is slightly lower than overall national ectopic pregnancy rates (1.24%-1.97%).18 Quite apart from providing reassurance about Plan B’s safety, that finding virtually excludes the possibility that it prevents pregnancy by slowing or preventing normal movement of fertilized ova through the fallopian tube.”

    “Although the results of this study need to be confirmed and extended, they are consistent with epidemiological evidence on the efficacy of emergency contraception in relation to the timing of ovulation24 and are directly contrary to what would be expected if Plan B interferes with implantation.”

    http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/296/14/1775?ijkey=qsS31RMdFZfdU&keytype=ref&siteid=amajnls

    Stop lying already wingnuts
    I

  41. I’ve searched the Family Institute of Connecticut and can’t find anything about this. Do any of you have any other leads? I’m working on the issue of refusals in health care in Washington State and would be eager to learn more about the legislation and litigation in CT.

  42. Holy shit, Mnemosyne, when did I ever make an argument against emergency contraception?! That’s right, I never did!

    Gosh, no, all you did was come in asking faux-naive questions about but what if maybe it did prevent implantation so you could get back on your hobbyhorse of insisting that if healthcare workers want to deny healthcare to women for religious reasons, they should be allowed to do so because, after all, women aren’t very important when compared to the almighty fertilized egg.

    Seriously, dude, do you think we don’t know how you operate by now? You’re just pissed because I shut you down before you could play your little game out in full. I’ll call the wwwwaaaa-mbulance for you and play you a tiny violin, too, so you can complain about how mmmmeeeeaaaann the old feminists are for not letting you ask stupid questions that you’ve asked a million times before without actually paying an attention to the answers.

  43. Mnemosyne, I’ve also not argued, in this thread or any other, that healthcare workers should be allowed to refuse the relevant services to women for religious reasons. I said explicitly in the previous thread that I have no objection to the firing of a healthcare worker who pulls that sort of thing.

    In this thread I asked a question on which there was some confusion among the regular commenters here–you yourself disagreed with what Jill and houseofmayhem said about EC. So I’m glad there was a chance to clear this up. I’m now convinced that the evidence favors your view of how EC works, which to my mind renders the “pro-life” fussing about EC quite puzzling indeed.

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