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From: dyer@wivax.UUCP (Stephen Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: mini-pill, implantation and morality
Message-ID: <19451@wivax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 28-Apr-84 01:23:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: wivax.19451
Posted: Sat Apr 28 01:23:04 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Apr-84 06:55:43 EDT
Organization: Wang Institute, Tyngsboro, Ma.  01879
Lines: 30

This is going to sound a bit like ethical hair-splitting, but unfortunately,
this kind of argument is required if you want to have any kind of ethical
system that stands up to scrutiny.  I don't make any claims for this in
particular, however, since it's somewhat half-baked.  But, it interested me
enough to think about it for a while.

A number of people have alluded to the fact that IUDs and the progestin-only
mini-pill produce their contraceptive effect through preventing the fertilized
egg from implanting into the uterine wall, and that strictly speaking, such
methods would doubtless be made illegal if abortions were made illegal.
I'd like to make the proposal that this doesn't necessarily follow.

First, not all fertilized eggs are successfully implanted, and not all
pregnancies are carried to term.  Such failures of implantation and
miscarriages are morally and legally neutral, because there was no agent
to cause the abortion.  Second, I'd like to make the distinction between an
abortifacient agent--one which induces an abortion--and an agent that
makes implantation less likely.  The mini-pill and IUD would fall into the
second category.  By taking the mini-pill, one is not causing an abortion,
but merely decreasing the chance that a successful implantation will occur.
This might sound like a needless distinction, but it seems consonant with
what many moral theologians say about care for the gravely ill.  That is,
withholding treatment is not the same as actively causing an individual's
death.  In the case of the mini-pill, one is generically changing the
uterine environment, and not aborting any particular embryo.

-- 
/Steve Dyer
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