…and this is a 
Why the wingnuts hate Plan B
Category: Politics • Reproduction • Science
Posted on: April 6, 2006 5:14 PM, by PZ Myers
There has been an oddly evasive struggle going on in Washington DC for the last several years. We have a safe, easy method of emergency contraception that has been turned into a political football, with Republicans playing their usual role of criminally stupid thugs, trying to crush a simple idea: Plan B contraception. It illustrates exactly how the Religious Right is trying to intrude on your private life, and in particular, how they want to control women.
I'll explain how Plan B works, but to do so I'm going to have to explain some basics of the hormonal control of the menstrual cycle.
This is a fairly complicated but typical diagram illustrating the various organs, hormones, and changes that go on in the menstrual cycle. At the top is the master gland, the pituitary, that secretes regulatory hormones; below that is a diagram of the changes in the ovary; below that is a diagram of changes in the lining of the uterus; and finally, at the very bottom, is a graph of the concentration of various hormones in the blood during the phases of the cycle.
Intimidating, I know. My students are going to get grilled on this in the next month, and will have to memorize it all and much more, but here I will give you the greatly simplified version.
Forget the uterus for the moment. It's the most familiar part of the story to most women; as you can see in the diagram, there is a thickening of the lining over the course of a month, and then that lining is abruptly sloughed off in the actual process of menstruation. It's overt, but it's actually a symptom, not a cause, of the more interesting things going on in the ovary.
The ovary contains a supply of eggs. One egg each month begins to ripen and mature into a large structure called a follicle, regulated by a hormone from the pituitary called Follicle Stimulating Hormone, FSH. The follicle is going to produce estrogen, which is what causes the growth of the uterine lining. FSH is particularly important early in the cycle.
A second pituitary hormone, Luteinizing Hormone, assists in stimulating the mature follicle, and in particular, a rapid surge in LH is what triggers the follicle to pop, releasing the egg, in a process called ovulation. This is a key step, so remember this: a spike in LH levels triggers ovulation.
After ovulation, the egg goes on its way, and might be fertilized, leading to pregnancy. The follicle left behind isn't done yet, though; it becomes a structure called the corpus luteum, which continues to produce estrogen (necessary to maintain the uterine lining), and also gradually produces more and more progesterone. Progesterone helps maintain the uterine lining, but also suppresses LH production by the pituitary. It's a kind of timer. The corpus luteum is maintained by the levels of LH, but the corpus luteum also produces rising levels of progesterone, which shut off LH…and when too little LH is produced, the corpus luteum shuts down, no estrogen and progesterone are produced, the uterine lining is no longer maintained, and a woman finds a bloody mess in her panties.
The key thing to remember about this part, though, is that progesterone suppresses LH.
Put two pieces of the story together: a spike in LH levels triggers ovulation and progesterone suppresses LH. Hmmm. This suggests an idea. If you wanted to prevent ovulation, how would you do it?
(Consider this a test. Imagine that Jeopardy jingle playing right now.)
Time's up—I bet everyone came up with the right answer, though. Giving someone a large dose of progesterone would shut down LH production, so there would be no ovulation, so no egg would be released, and any sperm happening to be in the woman's reproductive tract would find nothing to fertilize.
You have just figured out what is called Plan B contraception. It is a form of birth control that tells the woman's ovaries to hold off on releasing any eggs for a short while. It's called emergency contraception, because it is used by a woman who has, for whatever reason (rape, a broken condom, misplaced enthusiasm, second thoughts, anything) had unwanted sperm in her reproductive tract, and she wants to make sure that this isn't the moment her ovaries happen to pop a follicle.
Plan B is not an abortion.
Plan B doesn't help if one is already pregnant, and it doesn't affect any implanted zygotes. Pregnant women produce progesterone naturally.
Plan B gives women the ability to control, to a limited extent, when they will expel a gamete. In purely reproductive terms, it's a bit like a male's ability to control when he will ejaculate, or expel his gametes. That's it. No fertilized zygotes are involved, so that level of the birth control debate isn't even relevant. It's simple, responsible, and safe. You'd have to be insane to object to Plan B.
So why are Republicans holding it up?
This is an issue on which we can completely ignore any assertion that life begins at fertilization (which I personally find absurd), because it's irrelevant: fertilization doesn't take place. No zygote, no fetus, no embryo, no babies. The claim that this argument is about the life of a baby is null and void, and the opposition to Plan B makes it glaringly, brilliantly clear that this isn't about the sanctity of life at all: it's all about controlling a woman's ovaries. She will not be allowed to tamper with the timing of ovulation.
The ugly intent of the right wing fundies is unmasked right here, with no phony piety to hide their goals. They want the power to regulate a woman's physiology against her will.
What contraceptive method do you use? If it's not abstinence, you ought to realize that these kooks will be after you, next.
Comments
What seems to be going on is an (intentional?) conflating of "Plan-B" with "RU-486", at least in a lot of the material I've read. Thank you for your description, because even though I knew that the two of them were different, I had yet to get a really good description of what Plan B was doing. This clears up a lot of questions that I had about the issue.
Posted by: NonyNony | April 6, 2006 5:29 PM
Thanks for that explanation!! It's neat to know how it works. It's also good to know how it doesn't work (doesn't kill a fertilized egg; it prevents conception). I think a good way to put it might be that, on a reproductive level, this is the chemical equivalent of a condom. (As always, STDs are another thing of course.)
Posted by: Leon | April 6, 2006 5:39 PM
As above, thanks for the explanation. PZ, somehow your very clear-cut rational explanation needs to be widely distributed.
Posted by: Rocky | April 6, 2006 5:47 PM
I'm embarrassed not to know the answer to this: how long is an oocyte viable in utero once it has been expelled from the follicle? I have a very vague recollection that it's about a day........
Posted by: Andy Groves | April 6, 2006 5:51 PM
A right wing fundie such as myself would be OK with this. I don't understand what the fuss is all about.
Posted by: Greenthing | April 6, 2006 5:56 PM
Likewise, how long are sperm viable? Again, my vague idea is that they can be viable for several days, but I really don't know.....
Posted by: Andy Groves | April 6, 2006 5:56 PM
To be fair there is also some evidence that one of the modes of action (albeit a tertiary mode and certainly not the primary mechanism) is by changing the endrometrial lining and thus hindering implantation.
Of course, given the high % of fertilised blastocysts that fail to implant anyway this doesn't do anything for the wingnuts arguments whatsoever. It is, however, better to note these things just so we don't get accused of misrepresenting things.
None of this is in any way an argument against plan B - as far as I know this is one of the modes of action of IUDs as well and I don't see most evangelicals (catholics are a different kettle of fish) arguing against whether they should be available - somewhat of a hypocritical stance.
Posted by: DrYak | April 6, 2006 6:03 PM
Yes, sperm are viable for several days. Around 4-5, I think.
Posted by: Leon | April 6, 2006 6:08 PM
If I can go off on a tangent for a moment, how on Earth does an ovary ripen only one egg at a time (usually)? Probably needs another blog entry to answer properly, but the question just struck me.
Posted by: NelC | April 6, 2006 6:14 PM
That was perfect: Quick, painless, and simple for anyone to understand. I didn't even bother to enlarge the diagram and graph. Thanks for the explanation PZ.
Posted by: Jeremy | April 6, 2006 6:17 PM
My wife and I have discussed this very thing many times and have both come to the same conclusion. If someday we were able to develop a magic pill that was 100% effective against not only pregnancy but also against all STDs, the religious conservatives among us would still be against it. Their primary agenda is not about saving unborn fetus babies. It is about controlling womens' sexuality.
Posted by: Bruce | April 6, 2006 6:23 PM
Vasectomy. Will they force me to reverse it? It would certainly invalidate your "controlling women" hypothesis and make us all equal anyway.
Posted by: bmurray | April 6, 2006 6:28 PM
Question: What might happen to a fertilized embryo when traveling enroute to implantation in the uterine wall and is subjected at that point to Plan B?
If the answer is "nothing", then I am one with Greenthing on this topic.
Posted by: demoman | April 6, 2006 6:36 PM
It's OK if you don't know, Andy -- you're an ear man, anyway. Human ovum viability starts to drop off rapidly between 12 and 24 hours after ovulation; sperm viability is in precipitous decline by 72 hours, and everything in the female reproductive tract is conspiring to kill the little wigglers, so even that is fairly optimistic.
Posted by: PZ Myers | April 6, 2006 6:36 PM
Some of them probably would outlaw vasectomies if they could. It's not just women they're after, though women are the primary targets.
Posted by: Leon | April 6, 2006 6:37 PM
The ugly intent of the right wing fundies is unmasked right here, with no phony piety to hide their goals. They want the power to regulate a woman's physiology against her will.
The key problem I have with this conspiracy theory is that a large number (and probably the majority) of religious people are women -- any church I've been forced to attend was predominately attended by women -- although many, certainly, post reproductive age. A far more likely explanation for the religious disapproval is simply ignorance of the mechanism -- taking a drug after intercourse sounds like an abortion to them whether it really is one or not.
Posted by: Jonathan Badger | April 6, 2006 6:38 PM
Ah, the heaven and hell of the internet:
I was about to search the nets for a short sweet summary of ovulation for an email I'm writing, and, lo- here it is. Thanks.
On the hell side, I wish I hadn't seen this link http://alternet.org/blogs/peek/34576/
to the author interview about the total abortion ban in El Salvador.
They Can't Even Stop Ectopic Pregnancies Before The Fallopian Tube Bursts.
to channel the Rude Pundit for a moment:
If every anti-choice organization that gets a copy of the April 9 NYTimes Magazine- and they should get copies, lots of copies, by email, fax, and letter- doesn't immediately condemn El Salvador's law as being a hideous perversion of every 'pro life' ideal they hold, then those organizations are actively 'pro gutshot to the lower torso as a punishment for women having sex.' Because gutshots and ectopic pregnancies are about equally survivable: without modern surgical methods they're going to kill you. That is all.
Posted by: kathryn from Sunnyvale | April 6, 2006 6:42 PM
Sad, but not altogether surprising I suppose, given the current whacky climate. After all, why should the "rapturous right" suddenly start being rational? The next thing you know there will be a bill to make both menstruation and male masturbation illegal - at least for those who aren't already blind.
Posted by: Ray | April 6, 2006 6:42 PM
NOOOOO!! I'd go to prison for life plus six if they made that illegal!
Posted by: Leon | April 6, 2006 6:59 PM
I'm certain you know that a lot of Christians today have an institutionally-prescribed disgust for condoms, and Plan B really isn't any different.
The general argument is that, in either case, you are actively preventing the formation of human life, which is funny, because, from a not-altogether-twisted perspective, abstinence is, also, actively preventing the formation of human life.
But some Christians would argue that this is passive, not active--unless, get this, a man and a woman (in marriage) want to have a child, but abstain for whatever reason. THEN, although it may not be sinworthy, the behavior is looked at with scorn.
And this gives Christians a pretty clear choice, which they ignore in droves--Richard Simmons or nymphomaniacs.
Posted by: J.D. Fisher | April 6, 2006 7:04 PM
"Their primary agenda is not about saving unborn fetus babies. It is about controlling womens' sexuality."
I gotta agree with this one. Maybe not just women's sexuality, but unmarried people's sexuality. There definitely seems to be the view that if there is no "punishment" for having sex (STDs, unwed pregnancy, etc.)then you shouldn't be having sex at all.
Posted by: plucky punk | April 6, 2006 7:07 PM
This is absolutely the best explanation of how Plan B works that I've seen. Thanks.
Posted by: patriotboy | April 6, 2006 7:11 PM
DrYak, others:
Let me see if I understand. There's this (speculative) effect of Plan B, where it might prevent a fertilized blastocyte from implanting in the uterus. But it's a very common thing for fertilized blastocytes to fail to implant.
Then the pro-lifer can simply say that it's murder-level wrong to knowingly prevent (or introduce something that might well prevent) implantation from occurring. Yes, it happens all the time, but the fact that something happens all the time doesn't mean it's not murder-level wrong to knowingly make it happen.
So maybe the following is the point to make?: When an implantation failure does happen, this is not like when a child dies, or like when a city burns down. Instead, it's like when an eyelash falls off, or like when a flatworm dies. It's a completely insignificant happening, with no moral importance at all. Pro-lifers can sort of pretend to disagree with this, and insist that implantation failures are terribly unfortunate, like when a child dies. But no one can really believe that. No ordinary human could mourn an implantation failure.
If this is right, then the challenge arises: why is it murder-level wrong to induce an implantation failure, when it's such an insignificant happening? How can you say both that X's happening is of no importance, and that it's murder-level wrong to make X happen?
Is this what a pro-lifer is up against? Or am I missing the issues?
Posted by: Cole Mitchell | April 6, 2006 7:12 PM
"The key problem I have with this conspiracy theory is that a large number (and probably the majority) of religious people are women -- any church I've been forced to attend was predominately attended by women -- although many, certainly, post reproductive age."
It ain't all about sisterhood-- some women are shockingly judgemental of others of their sex who choose to exercise their sexual and reproductive freedom. Just look at how many hardcore pro-life women there are out there-- and I don't mean women who would prefer not to have an abortion, I mean those who campaign to take away womens' right to choose. I do agree with the second part of your statement, however, that many oppose the drug out of simple ignorance.
Posted by: edgyspice | April 6, 2006 7:15 PM
More to the point, assuming the existence of a hypothesised $god (set $god according to preference) who "created" all of this stuff, then if:
1. $god is omnipotent, and could have designed this stuff any way he/she/it wanted and
2. $god decided anyway to design things so that implantation failures are extremely common (more common than successes? I'm sure several people can fill in the blank here)
can we not conclude that $god doesn't consider implantation failures to be a big deal?
Posted by: Bored Huge Krill | April 6, 2006 7:45 PM
Cole:
Don't get me wrong - I am very, very much prochoice and deeply contemptuous of the prolife idea that "life begins at fertilisation". Being a developmental biolgist, I have looked at a huge number of morulas and blastocysts and other embryo stages (admittedly not human) and am well aware of the large numbers of embryos that fail to implant or fail early in the gastrulation process. You certainly won't get me arguing anything from an anti-abortion perspective. I don't think that prevention of implantation is murder, neither do I think that the destruction or research on surplus IVF embryos is murder.
However, I do think that when debating these wingnuts it is important to have all our ducks in a row. If you were to debate someone arguing against plan B using only the info here and they were able to show you several peer-reviewed papers regarding the changes in endrometrial lining after oocyte release caused by levonorgestrel (plan B) what would you say? I think that by taking this tack - i.e. ignoring the possibility that plan B could inhibit implantation we are playing into the hands of those who would argue that there is something special about the fertilised embryo. I agree with you on the moral significance of "implantation failure".
Posted by: DrYak | April 6, 2006 7:55 PM
William Saletan of Slate had an interesting and slightly different take on this a while back...
He pointed out that fastest current tests can tell if a woman is pregnant is roughly 15 days after the egg has been fertilized. So, if you want to be picky, it's not possible to know if the morning after pill harms a fertilized egg or not without opening up the woman, which plan B opponents would obviously object to. I'm all for plan B, but if Saletan is correct (is he?, I'm not an expert in this), wouldn't it be more correct, scientifically, to say it's impossible to know if plan B pills really harm a fertilized egg, even if the odds are low?
Posted by: Jason | April 6, 2006 8:02 PM
Heh - I was actually somewhat disappointed that PZ had answered some of the questions already since I knew the answer! (I'm taking a course on mammalian fertility and sterility so, being a huge dork, I get excited when I've learned enough new stuff to answer a question.) I think he missed answering one though:
NelC asked:
If I can go off on a tangent for a moment, how on Earth does an ovary ripen only one egg at a time (usually)? Probably needs another blog entry to answer properly, but the question just struck me.
From my understanding, and I'll try to be very brief: primordial oocytes start to grow in their follicles "independently" (without a trigger) so at any point if you look in a woman's ovary you see follicles at various stages of development. After about 100 days, the Follicular Phase starts and the cells of the follicle can now receive FSH if they've got the receptor (if not, those oocytes will wind up apoptosing).
Now you get an upregulation of angiogenic factors from the somatic follicle cells, so you get vascularization. You have multiple developing follicles, but only one or two (normally) will become the dominant follicle (the one or two eggs that get ovulated). I don't know why, and I think the prof said that he wasn't sure *why* either, but good blood flow seems to equal good eggs (ex: less chromosomal abnormalities) and the dominant follicles have good vascularization. Now: why don't all the follicles have good vascularization, and therefore have more dominant follicles? Maybe something with just normal availability? Someone else will have to answer, but I hope that helps! Should at least be a jumping off point.
Also, please correct me if I've gotten anything wrong. I certainly am not deluded into thinking I'm any sort of expert on the subject.
Posted by: BrassyDel | April 6, 2006 8:03 PM
Be careful with that analogy or Kent Hovind will be comparing the female reproductive tract with his wristwatch.
Thanks for this clear explanation about how Plan B works.
Posted by: John | April 6, 2006 8:04 PM
Note the part I put in bold. This is why women undergoing fertility treatment are sometimes given progesterone to help maintain the pregnancy.
Posted by: idlemind | April 6, 2006 8:18 PM
I seem to remember reading somewhere that in some Canadian university study they observed that is is possible for folicles to develop multiple times in a cycle. This makes it impossible to be completely sure about avoiding pregnancy using "rhythm" methods (aka NFP).
This undercuts a big (usually Catholic) argument against contraceptives: that if you can have self control for a couple days a month, NFP will prevent pregnancy and only people without self control need contraceptives. (though, I also suspect the fact that NFP doesn't work 100% is a feature for many of its proponents).
Also, I was under the impression that there was no real science at all behind the claim that Plan-B prevent implantation.
Posted by: JP | April 6, 2006 8:22 PM
I think that you have all failed to understand the Literalists' position on this issue. To them it is not a question of controlling woman's sexuality, it a question of being "Literal". God designed sex for procreation -ONLY! ALL other sex is a sin. Therefore ANYTHING that interferes with the possibility of conception during intercourse is bad. That includes pre-intercourse preventives like condoms, IUDs, the pill(?); and post-intercourse methods like Plan B, RU486, and, of course, abortion. That's why, for them, the only option is abstinence.
I am not arguing in favor of this position, only trying to explain it I understand it.
Posted by: Karl | April 6, 2006 8:24 PM
For heaven's sake. Didn't anyone Google 'fertilization effect' before speculating that a dose of hormones would prevent a fertilized egg from implanting? Noooooo, I see not. Bunches of animal studies in 2004, monkeys, cows, rats, go forth and Google! There's no fertilization effect. Contraception prevents ovulation only. Even with a major dose of hormones, the baby...I mean zygote...will still implant, if it's viable in the first place, that is.
And! No one has ever read "cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches" and recalls the tendency of cultures to scapegoat groups when a society needs to release tension...Vestal Virgins (walled up when Rome lost battles), those Christians (set that fire, right?), those Jews (brought the Black Death, and that Big Lie thing, last century), etc. etc. etc. So it's Those Sluts (who can get money of their own and don't have to be our slaves anymore) now.
To connect the rest of the dots and answer Why Now? I recommend "Terror in the Mind of God". 'Splains all about what happens when young men can't earn a living and afford a concubine...I mean wife...of their own anymore. (Hint: Fundies happen. Hindu, Muslim, Christian, have you noticed?)
Shoo. Go Google.
Posted by: Tree | April 6, 2006 8:47 PM
The key problem I have with this conspiracy theory is that a large number (and probably the majority) of religious people are women
Jonathan, back before a woman's right to vote was acknowledged by law, some of the most vocal opponants of the suffrage movement were women. A result of brainwashing since infancy or of fear of independence, I dunno... but for whatever reason, there have always been a fair number of women complicit in their own subjugation.
Posted by: craig | April 6, 2006 9:06 PM
Hey JP --
Rhythm methods are definitely outdated ;) NFP or FAM (Fertility awareness method) is definitely not without its risks. However, while is is possible to ovulate several times per cycle, your fertility pattern is based off of three readings: cervical fluid, cervical position, and temperature. I haven't read the study you mentioned, but it is my understanding that if you were to have an extra ovulation, it would be in the window of 'unsafe' time and would be protected/abstaining. If you ovulated randomly during your cycle, it is likely the cervical fluid would not be very sperm-friendly.
Posted by: Nickel | April 6, 2006 9:16 PM
It just so happens that I got one of those this morning. The doctor had to perform it in an unattached building becuase the hospital was Catholic, and they don't allow vasectomies to be done on their property.
Posted by: mothworm | April 6, 2006 9:31 PM
Nickle,
(I realize NFP is different than the old rhythm method, hence the quotes: "rhythm".)
The multiple ovulation observation comes from a 2003 paper: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3927
and sounds like preliminary work. Not sure if there has been any follow up.
Posted by: JP | April 6, 2006 10:01 PM
...wouldn't it be more correct, scientifically, to say it's impossible to know if plan B pills really harm a fertilized egg, even if the odds are low?
Absolutely not.
Well, unless an egg happens to be fertilized while still in the ovary!
In which case, that's one impressive counterpart she had.
Posted by: jeebus | April 6, 2006 10:41 PM
& here I thought resistance to plan b was just big pharma protecting the pill sales.
Posted by: 1Watt | April 6, 2006 10:43 PM
Rather off topic but . . . it took (it seems) like 30 years before it came to light that early versions of the Pill were correlated with higher rates of reproductive cancers, and more recently, that post-menopausal hormones had similar correlations. Do we have good information that if a woman say, took Plan B five times in five years, or say five times in one year, or five times in five months, that years from now it would not be discovered that there was a similar correlation with higher rates of reproductive cancers?
I'm passionately pro-choice (and had several abortions myself (for which I was grateful and relieved), in my younger days, so this is not being anti- anything. Just asking.
Posted by: Amelia | April 6, 2006 10:47 PM
You can just as easily flip this on its head, though: since so many blastocysts fail to implant, anything that prevents their forming almost certainly prevents far more "embryo-deaths" than it causes.
Posted by: Alexander | April 6, 2006 10:49 PM
DrYak,
If you were to debate someone arguing against plan B using only the info here and they were able to show you several peer-reviewed papers regarding the changes in endrometrial lining after oocyte release caused by levonorgestrel (plan B) what would you say?
Before bringing up the fact that, even when observed, there's no evidence that those minor endometrial changes are sufficient to inhibit implantation, I'd go with this:
Intervention within 72 hours after intercourse cannot possibly amount to abortion, because implantation is not achieved until at least seven days after ovulation and the egg is capable of being fertilized for only about 24 hours.
Posted by: ema | April 6, 2006 11:21 PM
by the way, I just have to bring this up in light of an earlier post regarding Sunday's episode of "The Sopranos".
Quite apart from the clip showing a discussion about dinosaurs, the first scene in which the fundamentalists appear is quite relevant...
Fundamentalist #1 appears at Tony's bedside, wearing a "Terri Schaivo Vigil" T-shirt and holding a placard declaring "WOMB IS GOD'S", just before introducing "our prayer leader" who appears in the later scene.
He explains that they are there to "protest the firing of a pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control pills; we're here to try to get him his job back".
Tony replies "so that's what all the yelling and singing is about?"
Apparently script writers don't miss much...
Posted by: Bored Huge Krill | April 7, 2006 12:17 AM
ema,
If I understand you correctly, your point only works against pro-lifers who think that implantation is when killing the thing becomes wrong. But there are apparently plenty of pro-lifers who think that fertilization is when killing the thing becomes wrong. (I didn't make this up: http://www.physiciansforlife.org/content/view/184/36/) And I guess preventing it from implanting in the uterine wall amounts to killing it. Of course, if the drug doesn't even have these effects, then this is all completely irrelevant. (And for what it's worth, this is all academic for me; I am extremely pro-choice.)
DrYak,
I never thought you were pro-life. I just wanted to make sure I had the situation roughly understood. Also, I should apologize for my use of "blastocyte" instead of "blastocyst". Apparently, this is a pet peeve among those who know anything about developmental biology, though I certainly don't know the difference.
One more question. Are there are any other morally and legally innocuous things we do that tend to prevent implantation? One guy I found on Google claims that breastfeeding has this tendency. If there are lots of things like this, then it seems impossible to justify prohibiting Plan B contraception on the grounds that it tends to prevent implantation (assuming that it does in the first place).
Posted by: Cole Mitchell | April 7, 2006 12:57 AM
Ummmm.... about evangelicvals and IUD's- not so much love for the IUD in that camp I am afraid. Long story short I was told I was a bad person because I had an IUD and that I was a babykiller- BY AN OBSTETRICIAN.... Yeah- the same one that asked me if I was into witchcraft when i told him that someone had forecast my kid was a girl(not). He was not a very nice man and I wish I had had the guts to tell him to do the anatomically impossible at the time.
Posted by: impatientpatient | April 7, 2006 1:48 AM
I'm reminded of those theologians who opposed lightning rods on the ground that they enable people to avoid getting punished for their sins.
Posted by: Loren Petrich | April 7, 2006 1:51 AM
Loren Petrich:
I'm reminded of those theologians who opposed lightning rods on the ground that they enable people to avoid getting punished for their sins.
And the Russian Orthodox priests who got ticked off when Ehrlich introduced Salvarsan, the first viable anti-syphilis drug. Spare people the wages of sin? Never!
Still, lightning rods went up on the churches, eventually. . . .
Posted by: Blake Stacey | April 7, 2006 5:16 AM
Your science stuff is shaking my world view!!! Stop it!!!
Posted by: Mark | April 7, 2006 6:12 AM
"The key problem I have with this conspiracy theory is that a large number (and probably the majority) of religious people are women -- "
This illustrate the remarkable power of indoctrination. "What's a Matter With Kansas?" points out that people are fairly easily convinced to vote against their better interests. This is no different.
You take a female child and indoctrinate her from birth to be a baby machine, she will get in the way (euphemistically speaking)of other women who aren't part of the cult.
Posted by: Lya Kahlo | April 7, 2006 6:40 AM
It's not a matter of controlling female sexuality, it's about controlling all sexuality. Religions work best when they can co-opt the frustration of unfulfilled desires. Christianity in particular is optimized to spread among the downtrodden and suffering, and many of the historical policies of its sects reinforce those states.
Don't throw off the yoke of your tyrants, it's God's will that they rule over you. Oh, and here's a church for you to vent your pain and rage.
Don't freely express your sexual nature. Learn to repress it, fear it, and deny it. Turn those unfulfilled desires into religious fervor -- and married couples, keep churning out more converts to the faith.
The crazier people are, the more vulnerable they are to religion -- so the first goal of religion is to drive people crazy.
Posted by: Caledonian | April 7, 2006 7:31 AM
Got here from Pandagon. Couple of questions, if you don't mind.
I've seen the digram you post in numerous variations but what I'm interested in is never shown. How do women's testosterone levels vary through their cycles? I've a number of reasons to want to know this, but I'll stick with the easy and vague, "Questions raised by pondering personal experience."
How does regular hormonal birth control change the hormone levels shown on the diagram? Is the common drop in libido experienced by women on the pill due to those hormone levels being altered, or is it b/c testosterone levels are suppressed? The recent study out about how long term pill use is linked to permanent testosterone deficiency seems like cause for concern.
Posted by: Em | April 7, 2006 8:31 AM
Blake Stacey "Still, lightning rods went up on the churches, eventually. . . ."
Probably got scared that their churches kept getting hit - the parishioners started wondering what their priests were getting up to behind closed door ;-)
Posted by: baldywilson | April 7, 2006 9:04 AM
Playing devil's advocate here for a moment...
It seems to (not very knowledgeable) me that Plan B would function like RU-486 some significant fraction of the time. If it's taken after sex, which may be after ovulation, an egg may already be present and fertilized. And it sounds like the most likely time for fertilization is within 24 hours of sex, so taking it the next day would often make it ineffective unless it interfered with fertilization or implantation, or both. If it's very effective, I'd think it must be doing something beyond inhibiting ovulation.
Is that correct?
In that case, I don't think this is going to be very convincing to the people who think that zygotes are "human beings," and may even sound like a lie. The usual mode of Plan B may not be abortion, but it's going to seem like an abortion pill to fundies if the frequency of fertilization-but-not-implantation is not extremely low.
(I'm not one of those people. I have no problem with aborting fetuses, much less zygotes. I'm all for over-the-counter abortions if they're safe and effective. Hmmm... unfortunate image there, sorry.)
It also seems like somewhat unfair rhetoric---which will not persuade many of the people we're arguing against, and will make them think we're stupid or dishonest---if we say that it's all about controlling sexuality or regulating a woman's physiology against her will.
To anybody who thinks that a zygote is a person, or is anything much like a person, it's not mostly about that, although disapproval of sex does matter a lot in a more subtle way. There is a conflict of interest situation, and the issue often comes down to justifiable risk---is the person taking a risk with somebody else's life justified in doing so?
For example, suppose that many people shot guns fairly indiscriminately fairly often, such that 1 in 200 of us would eventually get killed, pretty much at random.
If all this shooting was necessary---e.g., because people were hunting for needed food, repelling invaders, and killing vermin that would eat our food or spread disease---many of this would accept this as a tolerable level of "collateral damage." People gotta eat, etc.
But if this indiscriminate shooting was just for fun, because people liked indiscriminately shooting guns, I think most of us liberals would have a problem with it. Thousands of people dying every year would seem like too high a price to pay for people who enjoyed carelessly shooting firearms. We'd think shooting guns at random was just not enough fun to justify killing so many people---or that if it is that much fun, something is wrong; you have an unhealthy fixation on dangerous uses of dangerous toys, which should not be encouraged.
That's how we hard-line pro-choicers seem to many people, on an unconscious or semi-conscious level, whether they think a zygote is actually fully a person or not. Whether they can articulate it or not, they think that a zygote has some value, and there should be some limit to the right to create and kill these "beings"---you have to have a pretty good reason.
To many of these people, "casual" sex is very bad---but to many more it's just kinda bad, or often ill-advised. They think it's often unhealthy and shouldn't be terribly important to you---you either shouldn't be having that sex anyway, or shouldn't want it that much, such that you're blind to the cost to others.
It's pretty much the way most of us feel about the weirdest, hardest-line gun nuts, who would defend gun rights even if 1 in 200 of us got randomly shot to death by people who simply enjoyed random gunfire---we don't think shooting guns is really that much fun, or if it is for some people, that's probably not healthy. (That is not intended to be at all representative of most actual gun-rights advocates, who aren't nearly that weird.) People enjoying dangerous uses of dangerous toys would not justify so much collateral damage. We'd think those people ought to learn some self-control or find other ways to amuse themselves.
In that situation, it would be unfair for pro-gun people to characterize anti-gun people as "just wanting to take away their guns" and simply being anti-gun. It isn't directly about that---it's about the degree of harm, the risk of incurring that harm, and whether that outweighs the benefit of taking that risk.
Naturally, in assessing what's an acceptable risk to others, you have to take into account how big the benefit is to the person taking the risk. People who don't think gunfire is very fun are naturally going to be less sympathetic to accepting much collateral damage due to gunfire. Likewise, people who think that casual sex usually isn't terribly good for you are going to be less sympathetic to accepting a bunch of abortions for it, if they think that the abortee is anything like a person with rights or even interests.
(Most people have some more-or-less utilitarian calculus like that underlying their ideas of what should be rights, even if they consciously think in terms of absolute rights---and in my opinion, they should.)
That's why "abortion on demand" is such a compelling phrase to many people---it emphasizes just how little such a "human life" counts if abortion rights are absolute, i.e., not at all. To someone who thinks a zygote is anything like a person, that just sounds wacky and utterly lacking in perspective; people can have ill-advised or predictably not-very-good sex at any time, for any reason or no reason at all, and take any risk with "someone else's life", and evade the consequences at the expense of that "someone else."
If I thought a zygote was much like a person, or much like a person, I'd have to agree, as I would agree that careless gunfire is just not valuable enough to justify killing innocent bystanders.
Posted by: Paul W. | April 7, 2006 9:32 AM
Does anyone know what the other effects of giving someone a large dose of progesterone are? I've heard of people taking EC and getting pretty sick (not dangerously so, just generally miserable) afterwards. Are there side-effects?
Posted by: ThePolynomial | April 7, 2006 9:59 AM
This post and discussion is the best example I have ever come across of what every blog aspires to be. Anyone with a free half-hour who is even remotely intrigued by reprodutive biology or bloggin in general, should be encouraged to read it.
First, the explanation of the science behind pregnancy and contraception is succinct and easy to understand for anyone with no more than high-school biology. Second, the comments that follow address the issues PZ chose not to. The questions asked and the answers supplied paint a most complimentary picture of the intellectual depth of Pharyngula's readership. There's discussion of research, religion, politics, feminism -- you name it -- almost all of it delivered in calm, reasoned tones.
Kudos.
Posted by: James Hrynyshyn | April 7, 2006 10:13 AM
If someday we were able to develop a magic pill that was 100% effective against not only pregnancy but also against all STDs, the religious conservatives among us would still be against it.
You don't need to wait for such a day. It is here already and expressed in the religious wackoright being opposed to a vaccine against HPV. They don't want kids getting vaccinated against HPV because "it will lead to sex". I suppose they must also be opposed to treatment of syphilis, gonorrhea, any chance of a vaccine against HSV(s), HIV, etc. ANY such vaccine or cure can only lead to sex.
Case closed. It is abundantly clear that they just want to control the sex lives of everyone else. It isn't a surprise, given their nature.
Posted by: Praedor Atrebates | April 7, 2006 10:33 AM
Cole:
I hate to nitpick an otherwise valid and rational post, but there is a group of humans who (rationally) mourn an implantation failure. For infertile couples who go through in vitro fertilization, the implantation is the most difficult moment. It's the least controllable, and most mysterious part of the process. The female goes through difficult phases of hormonal injections, the egg extraction procedure, and then the implantation process, and then waits for implantation to happen. The day it didn't happen for me and my wife was probably the worst of my life.
Granted, I wasn't mourning the loss of a particular human being, which I think was the intention behind your statement.
Posted by: idahogie | April 7, 2006 10:46 AM
The first thing to understand about fundies concerning reproductive health is that they want people to produce as many babies as possible. They think there is some upcoming war between the forces of good (themselves, obviously) and the (largely undefined) forces of evil. It's all about creating more "soldiers for the army of God." Anything that gets in the way of that is, on its face, an abomination.
That means no contraception, no abortion, and no gay sex. Sex before marriage is still to be condemned, but any babies created from such union must be brought to full term regardless of the mother's ability to care for the child. Even the mother's health is secondary to this goal. God needs more souls dammit, and the woman's life is secondary to that of the fetus. It must be born under any circumstances.
So, everybody should get married as soon as legally possible and churn out babies like puppies in a third rate puppy mill. Everybody. Women and men, regardless of their sexual orientation, health, or personal ambition.
In the fundie mind, there is no concern for overpopulation, or for the environment, because God will provide until Armageddon comes; after which such things will cease to matter. There is no concern for civil rights because all humans are abjectly subservient to God and His word, as interpreted by them.
Dangerous morons all, and to the last.
Posted by: BruceH | April 7, 2006 10:49 AM
Thanks for the great information. I remember decades ago in High School biology charting the eustrus cycle of mice. Once we had done that (over the course of several weeks, I don't remember the cycle time, this was almost 30 years ago.) we injected the mouse with FSH. Some time later we injected our mouse with LH. After that we sacrafised the mouse (broke its neck, ether would have damaged the eggs) and extracted the eggs. We tried to induce parthagenesis in them and incubate them. None of use were sucessful in the last part but it was fasinating.
We had a pretty interesting biology teacher. One day she came in with the latest issue of Time magazine. One the cover was a Nobel prize winner. She had trained him how to inject mice many years before. She was kind of choked up about it. She had good reason to be proud. I didn't end up going into biology, but I stll remember a lot from her class.
Posted by: Jim | April 7, 2006 11:20 AM
But that's what it is. I doubt we're ever going to change the minds of the hard-core christian right. We're fighting for the people in the middle who may not know what their vote for a republican really stands for. It'slike those little "Hetero Rights Watch" blurbs Dan Savage occcasionally includes in his column. The religious are all up in arms about "teh gays" right now, but the push to ban abortion leads right in to the push to ban plan b, which leads to the push to ban birth control of any kind.
These are people simply insane, and I see no reason to coddle them. If they honestly beelieve that a microscopic clump of cells is worthy of more rights than a fully grown, autonomous woman, then they have absolutely no concept of what "human life" entails. There is no "someone else". There is only the woman.
Posted by: mothworm | April 7, 2006 12:53 PM
At the bottom line, yes. But if we don't seem to understand why they think that's justified, we look stupid or dishonest. To use the guns analogy, if we were accused of simply "not liking guns," and wanting to take away gun-shooters' rights, it wouldn't be fair---it overlooks the fact it's not just an arbitrary aesthetic preference about guns, and is based on a risk/benefits analysis. (Again, I'm not talking about the actual gun-rights controversy---I'm talking about the hypothetical case above.)
I mostly agree that we're not going to win over most of the far-gone Christian Righters, at least in the short term.
However, a lot of people are somewhere in the middle, and many of them have a problem with "abortion on demand" because they reason the same basic way. They may not think a fetus is "a human being," but it's something sorta like one, enough that it shold have some moral weight. And they may not think that premarital or extramarital sex is a horrible unforgivable sin, but they think it's largely a bad idea.
So they'll unconsciously "do the math" and think that (1) abortion is bad, even if it's not as bad as most fundies think, (2) "casual" sex is bad, on average, even if it's not as bad as the fundies think, and therefore (3) abortion rights should be limited.
Many people who are pro-choice are only weakly pro-choice, because they believe in souls and/or have a poor understanding of biology, and/or because they have messed-up views about sex, marriage, etc.
These people in the middle are terribly important; because of them, we will likely see more and more restrictions on abortion.
Support for abortion rights is somewhat thin because we usually don't address these concerns. We do not usually explain why sex outside of marriage is a good thing or why aborting a zygote is no worse than letting the sperm and egg die without fertilization.
Typical pro-choice rhetoric bugs me, because I don't think it's all about a woman's right to control her own body. A person does not obviously have the right to have sex whenever and however they want, for whatever reason or no reason at all, if in that process they're creating a person with rights.
That's why many moderate people are against abortion in general but favor exceptions for rape---they think abortion is "bad" but are less inclined to penalize the woman if it wasn't a risk she chose to take. For somebody as pro-choice as me, those people are a big problem, and typical pro-choice rhetoric does not address their concerns. They are not convinced that a woman has an absolute right to create "a baby" by intentionally taking risks, and also the right to evade the consequences at the expense of the "baby."
I think there are many millions of people with issues around that. They mostly don't speak up, because they don't want to admit---perhaps even to themselves---that they think killing a zygote (or a fetus) is wrong but isn't murder. (Partly because they don't want to be badgered with slippery-slope arguments by either side, and partly because they're hopelessly confused about how they really should think of a zygote or a fetus.)
Posted by: Paul W. | April 7, 2006 1:26 PM
"The first thing to understand about fundies concerning reproductive health is that they want people to produce as many babies as possible. They think there is some upcoming war between the forces of good (themselves, obviously) and the (largely undefined) forces of evil. It's all about creating more "soldiers for the army of God." Anything that gets in the way of that is, on its face, an abomination. "
You'd think, then, that they would be a little more strategic in their goals. After all, those of us on the dark side would presumably be churning out soldiers for the Forces of Eeeeeeeeevul.
Posted by: MJ Memphis | April 7, 2006 2:31 PM
I dunno whether BruceH is just venting hyperbolically or what, but...
Fundies don't all think entirely alike. Many fundies and many more sorta-fundies don't believe that Jesus is coming back any time soon. They're not averse to environmentalism or family planning on any deep principle. (Many practice family planning and think it's a good idea---but many of those are phobic of anything that smacks of endorsing or subsidizing premarital or extramarital sex.)
A lot of the more-or-less Religious Right people are effectively anti-environmental just because they're suckers for right-wing propaganda, which makes environmentalism out to be a silly left-wing Chicken Little anti-capitalist propaganda conspiracy---not because they think Jesus will save us any time now. They really think the growth/sustainability problem is a myth, because they listen to too many right-wingers---some who do think it's moot because the second coming is imminent, and others who are basically just corporate apologists.
(Heck, I know atheists like that---conservatives who buy most of the Republican package except the explicitly religious bits. Sigh.)
A lot of the opposition to abortion, or to "abortion on demand" comes from similarly ignorant, confused people who could change their minds, if they knew some biology, some decent philosophy---and how silent the Bible is on the subject, and why.
(For example, the idea that "life" begins at conception has not been dominant for most of the last 2000 years, and isn't Biblical either. In recent centuries, up until recent decades, a fetus wasn't generally considered really "alive" until "quickening"---i.e., when it started to shift around and kick.)
Fundamentalists are not monolithic, just highly correlated---and the semi-fundamentalist middle of the electorate is substantially less so. (The right-wing propaganda machine, on the other hand, does a pretty good job of maintaining the correlations between things that don't necessarily go together.)
Posted by: Paul W. | April 7, 2006 4:16 PM
Just a pet peeve: Despite what they say, I doubt many people care about when life begins or whether the fetus is alive. They care about its moral standing, whether it deserves legal protection, whether it has the right not to be killed. After all, we kill all sorts of living things all the time, and it's no big deal, because they have little to no moral standing; hence finding out whether a thing is alive tells you almost nothing about its moral standing.
Posted by: Cole Mitchell | April 7, 2006 5:10 PM
Experimental evidence to disprove the belief that emergency contraception with levonorgestrel (LNG) prevents pregnancy by interfering with post-fertilization events is lacking. Here we determined the effect of post-coital and pre-ovulatory administration of LNG on fertility and ovulation, respectively, in the Cebus monkey. METHODS: To determine the effect on fertility, LNG 0.75 mg or vehicle were administered orally or s.c. once or twice within the first 24 h after mating occurring very close to the time of ovulation. Females that became pregnant were aborted with mifepristone and re-entered the study after a resting cycle until each of 12 females had contributed, in a randomized order, two LNG and two vehicle-treated cycles. To determine the effect on ovulation, LNG 0.75 mg or vehicle were injected twice coinciding with follicles smaller or larger than 5 mm in diameter. Six females contributed five treated cycles each. RESULTS: The pregnancy rate was identical in vehicle- and LNG-treated cycles. LNG inhibited or delayed ovulation only when treatment coincided with a follicle http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/19/6/1352
Levonorgestrel (LNG), a progestin widely used for regular hormonal contraception, is also used for emergency contraception (EC) to prevent pregnancy after unprotected intercourse. However, its mode of action in EC is only partially understood. One unresolved question is whether or not EC prevents pregnancy by interfering with postfertilization events. Here, we report the effects of acute treatment with LNG upon ovulation, fertilization and implantation in the rat. LNG inhibited ovulation totally or partially, depending on the timing of treatment and/or total dose administered, whereas it had no effect on fertilization or implantation when it was administered shortly before or after mating, or before implantation. It is concluded that acute postcoital administration of LNG at doses several-fold higher than those used for EC in women, which are able to inhibit Ovulation, had no postfertilization effect that impairs fertility in the rat.
A.L. Müller, C.M. Llados, H.B. Croxatto, Postcoital treatment with levonorgestrel does not disrupt postfertilization events in the rat, Contraception 67 (2003) 415-419
Posted by: Tree | April 7, 2006 5:22 PM
In case it's not apparent from my somewhat inconsistent scare quotes around many terms, I entirely agree. The issue is moral and legal personhood, or moral standing something like personhood, not life per se. It's also not about "human life".
The issue isn't whether something is human and alive---e.g., an epithelial tissue sample swabbed from the inside of my left cheek is human and alive, but it has no moral standing.
And when mothworm says...
...I mostly agree with that, too. The problem is that the majority of people are at least somewhat confused about exactly that, not just far-right fundies, and they vote.
I disagree with some of the assumptions there, though. Most of the people who are against abortion in general, or in some cases, do not think that the clump of cells should have more rights than the woman. That is not their position.
They think the woman---in most cases---took a risk with the clump of cells' rights, and she should not be able to get off lightly at the clump of cells' great expense, because the c