More on Plan B

Pro-life attorney Matt Bowman weighs in on our conversation regarding Plan B:

I think it is helpful to specifically discuss this issue in light of common Catholic protocols for rape.  In that context, which is usually where this arises in public policy, the issue cannot be merely whether Plan B generally risks or is intended for implantation prevention, because most (though not all) embryo-friendly Catholic proposals are willing to give Plan B in rape, except at the time a woman ovulates.  It’s therefore not enough to say that Plan B generally has a low risk of implantation prevention, even if that were true (the mere fact that abortion advocates and profiteers still feel the ethical need to tell women that implantation could be prevented seems to confirm the Vatican’s statement that the function is certainly present—also, as in most medical circumstances, there are recent studies to counter those cited by Saletan, which show that implantation prevention may well play a larger role).

Since the morning after pill’s proponents claim that it overwhelmingly functions to prevent ovulation, and since most (nearly all?) Catholic hospitals are willing to offer it to rape victims outside ovulation, it can be more helpful to ask what the function and intention of Plan B is when it cannot possibly be preventing ovulation because the LH surge has already occurred (or when there is intentional blindness about whether it has occurred, since it can be measured quickly and easily and the only motive not to measure it is to claim moral ignorance about its possible implantation-preventing effect).

At that post-ovulatory time, the only two remaining functions of the drug are inhibiting sperm migration and preventing implantation.  Sperm inhibition should be looked at to see whether it is a major factor, or if it is too late, and if it is a major factor, whether the mucus-thickening also prevents embryo travel and therefore also inhibits implantation before it arrives at the uterus.  Those are important questions.  But either way, if you take away the 95% functional mechanism of this drug by postulating that it is taken after the LH surge, the question is no longer whether Plan B generally has a low risk of implantation prevention.  The question becomes what proportion of the remaining reasonable functions, in this post-ovulatory situation, includes implantation prevention, both in practice and in intent.  There are only two functions left, and implantation prevention is one of them.  But it is nonexistent?

If someone is taking or administering the drug at this time and therefore they can’t be intending ovulation prevention, what is left for them to intend?  Are they not including within their general intent a desire to stop “pregnancy” by whatever means the drug may act?  Why else take it?  Finally, if Plan B does nothing at all after ovulation (which is not known), that would be a reason not to administer the drug—it would not be a reason to require Catholics to administer it, which is the proposal of abortion advocates.  So, post-ovulation, it seems that Catholics and the Vatican are on very solid ethical ground to refuse to administer Plan B.

Also, a reader does not find the Princeton report to be terribly helpful:

The recent post on "Mirror of Justice" points to a non-peer-reviewed report from Princeton researchers: "Emergency Contraception: A Last Chance to Prevent Unintended Pregnancy". The report referred to makes the seemingly precise statement: "all women should be informed that the best available evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that Plan B's ability to prevent pregnancy can be fully accounted for by mechanisms that do not involve interference with postfertilization events". That's a carefully crafted statement giving the impression of saying something definite. However, an equally correct statement could be created by simply replacing "can be fully accounted" by "cannot be fully accounted". The evidence doesn't exist to be able to discriminate between the two.

The report also does a certain amount of cherry-picking from the papers it refers to. For example, the paper referred to in footnote 36 contains the statement: "it seems improbable that overestimation from clinical trials alone can account for the discrepancies noted." The report leaves out this vital qualification, and only quotes statements from the paper consistent with the report's overall aim. This really doesn't help.