Jane Lake Makes a Mistake

Alexis:

On the slippery slope scenario, easy has just gotten easier. The proof will be in the numbers. Give it a year and you will unfortunately see what I mean!

Teaching healthy sexual habits works, but it needs to be supported and to be done in the home as well as in schools. Perhaps parents should be part of the programs developed. History does not need to repeat itself and each of those unwanted, unexpected pregnancies is a human being with unlimited potential.

Aborting an unborn child???

That's like saying throwing away a seed is killing an oak tree.

Anon:

They are called acorns! And yes, each acorn thrown away is an oak tree lost. But there is a distinct difference between plant and animal, and between animal and human. We do not feed humans to squirrels!

One must get beyond the misconception (no pun intended!) that because an embryo does not look like a baby or that it is only a few cells gives it any less value.

You've got a point about the unlimited potential of every embryo. Just think about what the world would be like if the embryo that became Hitler had been aborted. All that potential would have been wasted. Take your rose colored glasses off because the world isn't as simple as you like to think.

Granted, there are differences between plant and animal at the cellular level. Plants get energy through photosynthesis, animals produce energy chemically from their food. There is no difference between human and animal. Every human is an animal.

BTW, this is a different anonymous than your first poster.

Naomi:

Who died and made you God? We fight evil with goodness. That is life! Take your blinders off and see that the world can be a beautiful place!

So Jane, given that the MAP is just a strong does of the birth control pill, and works in exactly the same way, would you want to ban the Pill as well?

Also, nice bait 'n switch there - it will increase abortion? LOL!

Nice try.

What this will do is significantly reduce abortions, making the anti-choice crowd OBSOLETE. Thank God.

You won't be able to track abortion numbers anymore, you won't be able to force women to have babies anymore, and kids younger than 18 can get someone to buy it for them, so you won't be able to further abuse raped children anymore. Too bad for you.

JMJ

Jersey:

As I said, the numbers will speak for themselves. I fully expect abortion numbers to rise from this, and it is only naivete that would lead you to think otherwise.

I am against any form of contraception that can be an abortifacient, especially when the use of such contraception increases sexual activity and the failure rates ensure more unwanted pregnancies.

Interesting seeing you thanking God. I thought you were an atheist.

Ok where to begin….
First off I will grant you that human life is special. But honestly, you just breeze by the rape and incest points. What about the fetus of rape, should you force the woman to carry it effectively raping her again because you take away her choice in the matter? Ok now assuming you think rape victims should be allowed to have abortions, How do you distinguish a rape from someone lying about being raped? There is no way and therefore abortions in all fashions must be legal for everyone.

You say this will strike against “healthy sexual practices” but what are they? Is that “pulling out” using condoms, or abstinence? Cause lets face it, “pulling out” and abstinence don’t work and people on the right are fighting condoms every chance they can. I mean by your very liberal definition of what an abortion is…. Condoms are practically abortion. Is a miscarriage immoral?

Personally I think ever girl should start the pill on her first menstruation, but how would you ever legislate that? I think every time you have sex, and you don’t want a pregnancy, you should be wearing a condom.

Do I think this will be a license to screw without condoms for some people, yeah probably…but you’d be amazed how many people are still “pulling out” as their only means of birth control. So yeah I think there should be better, earlier and more sex ed out there and I think it should be mandatory. (I’m also against home schooling)

Anyways
Have a nice day
Pat

Eh, thanking God is just an expression - and an ironically funny one at that!

So, you hate sex, and you want to impose your hang-up on the rest of the world. That's great. You and the Taliban have something in common.

Read this:

The Morning After Pill - redux
(I wrote this a while ago, but given the news today, I thought I put it back up.)

I think, personally, and I mean this, the anti-choice crowd is scared to death of the MAP (Plan B - Morning After Pill) because if this medication becomes mainstream and easily available, abortion, as an issue, will cease to exist.

1: The numbers of these “abortions” will become impossible to track (which, ironically, always worked in the anti-choice arguments, as there was no way to show what the numbers were prior to RvW because people kept quiet).

2: The alleged detrimental psychological effects will be negated (women won’t ever know if they were even ever pregnant or not).

3: The stigmatizing of abortion providers, pro-choice politicians, and patients will be gone (no target enemy/victim to unite the anti-choice constituency).

4: It's no more "abortion" than taking the Pill regularly. So, to argue that Plan B should not be available is exactly to argue that the Pill should not be available. I wonder how many women (and men) would be okay with that?

I’m tellin’ ya’ - this will be the end of the issue of abortion.

Good riddance.

JMJ

Jersey:

For someone that clearly loves sex as much as you do, this must be a no-brainer.

Get this pill, have as much unprotected sex as you want, give it to your partner and bingo bango, you are safe!

If this doesn't increase the rate of STD's, promiscuity, unwanted pregnancies (10% failure rate, and abortion, I will eat my hat and gladly at that!

jane, are you some how incapable or responding to my points? Just because you don't respond to them doesn't mean they are somehow less valid.
Pat

Pat:

Rape and Incest are horrific crimes and the perpertrators should be punished. But the unborn child is not the perpertrator. He/she is an innocent victim. Where is there choice? We must not kill an unborn child in this circumstance. The way to make the situation better is to love the child and make her/his life something to be proud of and make a positive result of a negative event.

Healthy sexual activity can include oral and manual sex that result in orgasm but 0% chance of pregnancy. It is not just abstinence that works here!

So rape victims should be forced to have the children if they become pregnant? That’s ridiculous. The woman didn’t make a mistake, the woman didn’t want a child, the woman is now forced to have a baby!?
What if the rape victim is 12, you discounted incest, but think about it…. You have a 12 year old girl that gets pregnant from her father, she will most likely produce a very damaged child, and the pregnancy will possibly kill her, or at the very least be physically very difficult. You force her to have the child?

You don’t mention condoms…is there something wrong with condoms? Oh and you skip the other…loophole. The ass many people who sign chastity agreements have unprotected anal sex because you can’t get a girl’s ass pregnant. The current system of sex ed is not effective and you can’t blame people entirely for their mistakes because they don’t know any better.

The simple fact is that pro-choicers aren’t pro-abortion. I don’t like abortion and I do think that it shouldn’t be used as a method of birth control. But I think that there are circumstances where it should be allowed, not that it should be forced. You and your ilk of pro-lifers would force your opinion that abortion is wrong, on other people, you seek to illegalize it. And what will illegalization accomplish? Many people will still be able to go to Mexico or Canada for legal abortions. You will ONLY affect the poorest of the poor, who can’t afford their children. Many pro-lifers state that adoption should be used, We simple don’t have the resources for that. Yes all the white babies would probably be adopted, but what about the children of other races…. We can look at other countries without abortion, such as china, for examples of what will happen here. We will have thousands of children abandoned on the street. Most of these babies will be raised in very crowded orphanages and will probably be forever dependant on social aide. We don’t currently have the resources for this possibility. It would take years for us to train and provide these sorts of services and we’d never be able to keep up with the supply of children.
Pat

The godless Left has done it again. A "morning after" pill so the neighborhood slut can cavort all night and then cover up her wickedness the next morning with a little pill. God help us! Just you wait -- America's moral values will sink even lower. We are begatting a nation of witches, harlots and fallen women!

Jane, who died and made ME God? I guess it's the same person who died and (you wish) made YOU God. That was an interesting response coming from you of all people. If you're going to preach from your computer, you'd better expect a few hecklers. Sorry, Rose Petal, it's not as cut and dried as you'd like to believe. Time to get a clue.

Over the counter it isn't available to individuals under the age of 18 without parental consent. So... that's not really going to mean that all of a sudden kids are going to start having sex. Most of them probably haven't even followed this in the news.

Jane, I glanced at your blog - nicely put together, but got hung up here:
I am very dismayed at the approval to provide the morning-after pill over the counter without prescription. ..These are my top 3 reasons why it is a disaster.

1) It will encourage more teenagers to have unprotected sex, resulting in more spread of STD's.
2) Because there will be more unprotected sex and the pill has a 10% failure rate, it will result in increased unwanted pregnancies and thus increased abortions.
3) The way it works is to prevent the ovary from releasing an egg and preventing the uterus from allowing a fertilzed egg to attach. The latter of which is actually aborting a viable embryo. So anyone using it will never know whether they are aborting an unborn child or not.

Here's the problem - you aren't basing this on anything other than your own "intuition". Your statements are true in theory (i.e. it could happen), but the data simply does not support it at all. Morning-After Pill (MAP) access, measured by statistically comparing availability across areas, has no statistically significant effect on rates of unprotected sex.

Now, this doesn't mean it has no effect, but it does not appear to be large enough to be noticable in the data. Having said that, a 10% or higher increase in unprotected sex would be noticable if this in fact were the case. And only if it rose by MORE THAN 10% would it lead to an overall increase in unwanted pregnancies. Economists call this "elasticity". This just won't happen because in all likeliness, there is far less than a 5% change if positive at all.

You are willing to point out the seriousness of sex, but assume that others don't share this view and will respond very liberally to access to better contraceptive.

Your third point is correct and I cannot argue with your moral beliefs about life begining at inception. But your behavioral arguments are just not true. My personal belief is that we should respect all individuals' personal beliefs so far as it applies to their own body (which the Supreme Court also backs). Individuals can decide for themselves and act in their own way. Abortion is never an easy choice, but it is a real choice for many women.