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Monday, March 20, 2006

More on "fertilized egg = baby"
Posted by Jill | 10:01 PM

Amanda makes a very good point about the implications of equating every fertilized egg with a fully-developed human being and why the pill is MORE "pro-life" than using no contraception at all:

I would argue that if they actually believe that a fertilized egg is a baby and that it’s a tragedy if a fertilized egg meets its end on a tampon, then they should support, not oppose the pill. There’s no evidence that the pill makes it more likely that an already fertilized egg isn’t going to implant. However, there is plenty of evidence that the pill is extremely effective at preventing fertilization from occuring in the first place because the pill works by blocking ovulation. There is also evidence suggesting that 50% of fertilized eggs will die all on their own.
What we have then is a numbers game–if you are truly concerned about not having fertilized eggs die, then it’s a far superior choice to be on the pill than to avoid using contraception. I’ve been on the pill for the majority of my adult life and I’ve probably never had an egg get fertilized in the first place, thus I’ve never had one slough off and die. But your average woman who’s not “contracepting” and having as many babies as god gives her or whatever the sappy patriarchal phrase of the moment is probably has “killed”, bare minimum one fertilized egg for every actual pregnancy, much less birth, she has. Basically, an evil single pill-popping feminist like me is far less the baby-murdering monster than your average contraception-rejecting submissive godly woman.

I will predict right now that any wingnut who reads my irrefutable by-the-numbers argument in favor of using contraception or, better yet, just getting sterilized and removing all possibility of every killing a “baby” through carelessly menstruating will reject my suggestion and continue the process of killing “baby” after “baby”. I know–bold statement and I definitely invite any and all wingnuts who are prepared to quit killing “babies” by sterilizing themselves or at least using the pill to step forward and declare they are about to stop their murderous ways this minute.


In lieu of this, it’s time to start asking why wingnuts insist on equating the pill with abortion, since not using contraception has more in common with abortion than using contraception, since putting yourself at risk of pregnancy means you’re taking a chance of killing a “baby” whether you mean to or not. From the “baby”-danger perspective, the pill isn’t aboriton. But if you define “abortion” as the actual or symbolic rejection of a man or his sperm, then the pill fits the definiton, at least to people who are crazy enough to think that refusing to get pregnant at every opportunity is rejection of a man.

Which of course is exactly how wingnuts use the word “abortion”–as a way to indicate that a woman has been willful and refused to submit to male power/virility. Pam’s post today is a classic example of a wingnut using the word “abortion” in just this way–”abortion of marriage” is a nonsensical phrase to most people but to people who view female control over our own lives and bodies as an abhorent instrusion on male property rights to female bodies, then divorce is just another version of abortion.


Now, I'm not a big fan of the pill. Back during the eight months I took it in 1974, it was a high-estrogen nightmare called Ovral, and it made me gain a ton of weight and made me damn near psychotic in the bargain. But many women since then have taken far better formulations with no adverse effects. Since then, I've been a diaphragm-and-jelly girl, and have had exactly zero unplanned or planned pregnancies. So it's worked just fine for me.

But Amanda is absolutely right: If a passed fertilized egg that doesn't implant is essentially murdered, then preventing fertilization, which is what the pill does, is far more pro-life than risking those 50% of fertilized eggs which never implant -- except that the pill DOES act by essentially forming a hard candy shell around the egg that says to the sperm, "Fuhgeddaboudit, Jack!" -- it's a biological rejection of male determination over the rest of a female's life that's far more profound and therefore far more devastating to the kind of pencil-dicked weasels that populate the Christofascist Zombie Brigade than refusal of an advance at the church social.

What saddens me is that there are actually women who are taking the side of these guys -- women who seem to think that all we have to do is get rid of birth control and men will stop cheating on their wives and stop trading them in for a younger one; that corporations will stop outsourcing jobs so that families can make it on one income, that television will run nothing but Seventh Heaven reruns in perpetuity, and life will be just as it was in the good old days, when negroes (sic) knew their place and everyone knew their role, and if they weren't happy they'd at least shut up about it. All these women need to do is look at the men on their side of the fence -- the Newt Gingriches and the Henry Hydes and all the other right-wing men who can't keep their pecker in their pants -- to know that abstaining from sex except for procreation isn't quite going to cut it with their men, for all the lip service they give to mandatory chastity for everyone else.
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