{"id":249182,"date":"2021-07-18T09:41:23","date_gmt":"2021-07-18T14:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=249182"},"modified":"2021-07-16T19:40:04","modified_gmt":"2021-07-17T00:40:04","slug":"birth-control-abortion-connected-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/birth-control-abortion-connected-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"Are birth control and abortion connected? Here are the facts."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Author and journalist Molly Jong-Fast penned the Vogue article, “The Anti-Birth Control Movement is the New Anti-Abortion Movement<\/a>,” cutting right to the chase by claiming that “Republicans have started to blur the lines between birth control and abortion in the hopes of making it harder for American women to get both birth control and abortions.” But Jong-Fast’s article fails to acknowledge that it is not “Republicans” who have blurred the lines between abortion and birth control; it is the abortion industry itself.<\/p>\n

Fact: Some birth control can function as an abortifacient<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Jong-Fast specifically referenced the recent debate<\/a> in Missouri over whether to limit Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood over its provision of potentially abortifacient drugs \u2014\u00a0such as Plan B and Ella, which are given as “emergency contraception<\/a>” \u2014\u00a0and IUDs. Jong-Fast called Missouri’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt<\/a> to defund Planned Parenthood “a tricky play, attacking birth control as a way to attack abortion, and\u00a0it didn\u2019t work<\/a>… this time.” Jong-Fast also quoted Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill-Johnson, who lamented, “We\u2019re already hearing members of the U.S. Congress spread the same falsehoods we\u2019ve seen in Missouri, conflating medications that prevent pregnancy \u2014 birth control and emergency contraception \u2014 with medications that end pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jong-Fast either doesn’t understand or purposely ignores the fact that IUDs<\/a>,\u00a0emergency contraception<\/a> and the birth control pill<\/a>\u00a0can<\/em> function as abortifacients<\/a>; that is, they\u00a0can<\/em> cause early abortions as a secondary mechanism, according to their manufacturers.<\/p>\n

Fact: The abortion industry blurred the lines decades ago<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Though Jong-Fast insists that pro-lifers are the ones erroneously conflating<\/a> contraception with abortion, in truth, abortion supporters were the ones to falsely deny the abortifacient nature of some contraceptives by redefining widely understood scientific definitions of conception and fertilization. That deception goes back decades<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And while\u00a0some opponents of abortion mistakenly insist that birth control prevents abortions<\/a> and is therefore necessary, this belief is contrary to the truth. The distinction between contraception and abortion regardless doesn’t seem to make much difference in the end to Jong-Fast, who described her\u00a0ardent support<\/a>\u00a0for both in an interview<\/a> about her motivation for writing the article.<\/p>\n

READ: 10 risks of hormonal birth control that every woman should know<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Live Action News previously<\/a> traced the move to redefine when human life begins as a way of hiding the abortifacient potential of IUDs, the birth control pill, and emergency contraceptives.<\/p>\n

While the first line action of the birth control pill and emergency contraception is the prevention of ovulation, and the second line is to thicken the cervical mucus so as to be inhospitable to sperm even if ovulation does occur, the third line action is to thin the lining of the uterus, so an already-created embryo is less likely to implant there, killing the new human being. New birth control pills, with lower amounts of estrogen to decrease the risk of blood clots, do not prevent ovulation<\/a> as well as the higher-estrogen dose in older combination pills, meaning that today’s birth control pill is more likely to cause an early, silent abortion. An IUD works similarly, but because it does not contain estrogen, an IUD only “partially suppresses ovulation,” according to Mayo Clinic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Jong-Fast’s world, none of the above forms of contraception could be abortifacient, because although an embryo exists prior to implantation, the definition of pregnancy is the embryo’s successful\u00a0implantation<\/em>\u00a0into the uterine wall. But this understanding relies on a doctored definition of when human life begins.<\/p>\n

In the 1960s, abortion advocates moved the goalposts<\/a> from the common understanding that life begins at the moment sperm fertilizes the egg (fertilization) to create a genetically unique embryo, to instead claim it begins at implantation (now redefined as “conception”)\u00a0\u2014 when the embryo implants into the uterine lining.<\/p>\n

Fact: Contraception and abortion are linked<\/strong><\/h4>\n

As a previous Planned Parenthood clinic manager<\/a> noted, contraception and abortion are “two sides of the same coin.” Though Ramona Trevi\u00f1o began working at Planned Parenthood convinced that increased birth control access would decrease the need for abortion, she soon found the opposite<\/a> to be true.<\/p>\n