Flawed argument #3, and answer: Post-coital contraception is not abortive, but contraceptive
Flawed argument
“To justify the use of ‘post-coital contraception’ in moral terms, some doctors invoke the absence of direct scientific knowledge of its mechanism of action. There is no evidence, they say, of the prevention of embryo implantation that emergency contraception techniques are accused of achieving. What is certain, they continue, is that these methods have a ‘contraceptive’ effect when used before sexual relations. Considering that the pregnancy prevention effect of these compounds is very brief, is not absolute, and occurs only within 48 hours after sexual relations, why not, they say, allow that it is the contraceptive action which is operative in the prevention of pregnancy? It is known in effect that fertilization is not an immediate phenomenon, that it may occur several hours after sexual relations, either because of the rupture of a follicle during or immediately after relations or because of residual spermatozoa which later pass through the neck of the womb and reach the oocyte in the hours following sexual relations.”
“These doctors add that, if post-coital contraception techniques are not abortive, but purely contraceptive, and even if doubt remains in this regard, it would surely be uncharitable and unreasonable to deprive people of this assistance. When one thinks of the economic and human costs of an unwanted pregnancy in an adolescent still at school and entirely financially dependent on his parents, use of the ‘morning-after pill’ does not seem disproportionate. What would be disproportionate, continue these doctors, would be not to use this pill, at the risk of having to manage a pregnancy in an adolescent incapable of looking after a baby once it is born, or the more probable risk of driving the adolescent to the solution of surgical abortion, legal or otherwise, perhaps at the cost of her health, if not her life”.
Answer
“In response to these statements regarding the use of the ‘morning-after pill’ we could say that the absence of precise knowledge on the mechanism of action of post-coital contraceptives is not exclusive to these techniques: it is true of the entire range of contraceptives. In the field of contraception, knowledge of the mechanism of action of contraceptives has always been acquired indirectly, with a great deal of presupposition and deduction drawn from empirical facts. In the field of post-coital contraception, it is not possible to detect early signs of pregnancy, as no existing test techniques can reliably diagnose a successful fertilization within 48 hours after this fertilization has taken place. Nevertheless, the fact that post-coital contraception prevents approximately 85% of pregnancies from developing after fertilization, while its effect in preventing ovulation if it is administered before ovulation is far from being constant, proves that the predominant effect of this type of ‘contraception’ is its inhibition of the embryo’s implantation. The mere possibility that this pill could prevent the embryo’s nidation is reason enough for a serious obligation not to use it. No survey carried out to date has been able to provide objective evidence of the purely contraceptive action of the ‘morning-after pill’, whereas a number of different surveys have demonstrated a link between the ingestion of emergency contraception and the consecutive appearance of symptoms of hormonal imbalance and disorders in the uterine endometrium, predictive of an incapacity in the endometrium to be receptive to an embryo. If there is any room for uncertainty as regards the exact action of emergency contraception methods, this doubt veers towards an abortive action through the prevention of implantation. If this is the case, the rule in the area of morality demands that one refrains from using this pill, because what is at stake is not a simple economic problem or the difficulties associated with the occurrence of pregnancy in an teenager: what is at stake is the value of a human life, which surpasses any other value”.
“In addition, we are not confronted here with a case of confused conscience, as if there would be doubt as to the value of the planned action, as claimed by some advocates of the ‘morning-after pill’. As stated above, a woman requesting emergency contraception does so because she has had possibly fertilizing sexual relations and does not want the potential pregnancy to develop. Her intention is not, at that moment, contraceptive, as implied by the advocates of post-coital contraception: her intention is abortive. A doctor who prescribes the ‘morning-after pill’ to such a person is not prescribing the pill as a ‘contraceptive’ (to prevent fertilization), but as an abortifacient (to prevent the development of a possible pregnancy). It is true that a woman who takes ‘emergency contraception’ may do so in the absence of an incipient pregnancy, but this possibility does not alter the moral character of recourse to this practice. In fact, both the woman who requests it and the doctor who prescribes or administers it, are voluntarily running the risk of causing an abortion. Whatever the biological reality of the anti-pregnancy efficiency of emergency contraception, using this type of contraception in fact belongs, on a moral level, at least with regard to the intention, to the field of induced abortion”.