This will go down on your permanent record.

[apocalypsos]

In a spectacular act of complicity with the religious right, the Department of Health and Human Services Monday released a proposal that allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman's access to contraception. In order to do this, the Department is attempting to redefine many forms of contraception, the birth control 40% of Americans use, as abortion.

*buzzer sound*

Congratulations, Department of Health and Human Services, you just failed biology! That's fucking great. Now you're going to have to take it again next summer. And, oh, man, what is your MOM going to say?

Comments

you're kidding?

[catdancerz.livejournal.com]

*goes off to read the link*

Re: you're kidding?

[florahart]

Yeah, she's not kidding. So. Much. Fail.

[azzinita.livejournal.com]

The way that many religious conservatives see it, a woman is pregnant when the embryo gets fertilized. Many contraceptives prevent a fertilized embryo from implanting, thus making a woman ACTUALLY pregnant.

(Never mind that a fertilized embryo has a 30% chance of implanting anyway)

Ergo, to them, birth control causes abortions.

Which is quite frankly, stupid.

[wtfbrain.livejournal.com]

But don't most birth controls prevent the fertilization in the first place, what with preventing ovulation and all?

[florahart]

Often, they do, but since the other mechanism at work is to prevent implantation if you do ovulate, and you can't prove you don't/didn't, then in the whatever percentage of BCP users both had un-otherwise-protected sex at the right time and also ovulated, you're causing this "abortion" in whatever percentage of those would have, in fact, successfully implanted and had no other issues.

[wtfbrain.livejournal.com]

OK, I'd forgotten about that part of it. The whole thing is so patently ridiculous it's hard to think straight.

[florahart]

Though, frankly, I sort of want to show up one by one at the white house and demand that W determine for me whether I have ovulated/am ovulating/etc. I mean, if, let's see, the population of the US is 300M, right? And remove boys, kids, post-menopausal women, etc, still, there have to be at least 50M women for this. At 5 minutes a pop, there would still be a line to Albuquerque by the time his term is up, and we'd have tied him up for the entire remaining 7 fucking months.

>.>

And yes, yes it is. GRAH.

[cyprinella]

The hormonal ones do as well as barrier methods like condoms. I thought IUDs were a implanting preventor, but google seems to indicate that the mechanism with copper IUDs isn't completely understood but generally it's believed that the copper prevents fertilization by being toxic to sperm cells. So far as I know, hormonal contraceptives preventing implantation is a theory with no scientific evidence to support it at this point.

[azzinita.livejournal.com]

But you know those wacky religious conservatives will take any excuse they can and run with it.

"Oh noes! Them wimmens is having sex for fun! Quick! Make something up with the thinnest shred of scientific basis!"

[bexone.livejournal.com]

So far as I know, hormonal contraceptives preventing implantation is a theory with no scientific evidence to support it at this point.

this. the closest actual science has come to this is that they're still not entirely sure what the mechanism is when emergency conception is used -- so, being scientists and therefore unwilling to commit to anything until they're certain, they say that it "might" work by preventing implantation, rather than ovulation, and the religious right grabbed that, put it together with the fact that all EC is is a super-high dose of the bc hormones, and ran with it.

oh, those darn scientists and their pesky ethics, forcing them to put all the possibilities out in the open like that!

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

As was pointed out over on metaquotes, HBC is an abortifacient in the same way as being female is. Let's all save them the time and turn ourselves in!

[theliel.livejournal.com]

y'know. burn 'em all, god will know his own.

[catystorm.livejournal.com]

I'm getting the feeling that when you said the fail quota was used up for the week, the universe took that as a challenge.

[slashfairy.livejournal.com]

word. *rolls eyes*

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking the same thing.

[conuly]

You know, I get annoyed at those who say "Nobody uses abortion as a type of birth control!!!" because, of course, abortion *is* a type of birth control. And while I'm sure nobody uses abortion as their *routine* birth control, if they did, I wouldn't judge them for it. (Or if I did, I'd keep my thoughts to myself, at least.)

But what abortion is *not* is contraceptive. By definition, abortion is what happens when contraceptive fails to contra your ceptive.

Sheesh.

[ampersand.livejournal.com]

What the fuck. Where is all this extra fail coming from? They must be importing it from somewhere.

[kelly-girl.livejournal.com]

Maybe from the moon? Cause this ain't earth logic. Or maybe from mars.

Marvin the martian has a lot to answer for.

[ampersand.livejournal.com]

Marvin is too cute to be made of that much fail, though.

[drewbeartx.livejournal.com]

I don't know how much good it will do, but I'm reporting this to the local news programs & newspaper as a news tip.

[kimera.livejournal.com]

So I uh. Guess you guys won't be needing to borrow that cup of fail after all? There seems to still be plenty floating around down there :(

[kirana-44.livejournal.com]

wow, thats just...wow. the stupid it burns.