by 
Techskeptic likes to ask me questions that I’ve never talked about in this discussion:
Please explain to me how you can be want to force women to bear unwanted babies, but are OK with in vitro fertilization (I am assuming that because you didn’t gripe about it before).
Please explain how an abortion is any different than the results of in vitro fertilization.
I believe that the embryos that are created are living beings, and therefore, scientists are killing or freezing human beings. I believe that I’ve been singular in my focus, and have only responded to rabbit trails when posed by him and Musicguy. In other words, I don’t take my comments to be exhaustive of my beliefs on the issue, only indicative of my beliefs on the different topics as presented.
I don’t agree with IVF, and I believe that it is like abortion.
Please show me where you read that Plan B is to be taken 6 weeks after fertilization? Please show me where you read that ru486 is to be taken no less than 6 weeks after fertilization.
For what reason would you ask me to provide this kind of information? Plan B states that it is most effective right after intercourse. RU486 I’m less familiar with it, but I believe that it also wants to be used in the first trimester for the most effectiveness.
The only link I can possibly find between these questions and our discussion is my statement that all abortions stop a beating heart and measurable brainwaves– where both are present at 6 weeks. So, I guess I need to clarify myself here. Every abortion procedure (the surgical kind) stops a beating heart and ends with measurable brain waves. Since I believe that life begins at conception, if Plan B prevents implantation, then it could be said that this form of abortion does not stop a beating heart– it does end a life.
However, ru486 (according to my understanding, I’m open to correction) is taken to stop a pregnancy in process, and all abortion procedures are done after 6 weeks. I think that if we looked at the percentage of abortions, the numbers that we have hard data for would indicate that the above statement is correct (since I don’t know of a measure where we could test for an embryo being denied implantation with any kind of reliability).
So, for the purpose of discussion, I stand by my statement and the 6-week marker.
I have no desire to enter into this argument, I just have to say something, because there is this piece of misinformation that’s been making its way around, both in pro-choice and anti-abortion circles, and it bugs me because I believe in accuracy. It is this:
“Plan B prevents implantation”
Here’s how Plan B actually works:
Plan B is a very high dose of the same chemicals found in daily oral contraceptives. Like daily oral contraception, its primary mechanism of action is to prevent ovulation. No ovulation means no conception means no abortion. So as a rule, Plan B is not abortifacient.
There is some theoretical possibility that Plan B may prevent fertilization even if ovulation has already occured, by altering the hormonal makeup of the fallopian tubes. But even in this case, there is no abortion, because there is no fertilization.
There is next to no chance that Plan B prevents implantation of a fertilized ovum. A study was conducted in which women took Plan B, and then their uterine linings were tested 8 days later (the time at which implantation would occur if there had been fertilization). The researchers found that the only times there were changes found in the uterine linings were in women who had taken the pill at a particular time in their cycle when they weren’t ovulating, which means no fertilization could have occured anyway.
There is other evidence that Plan B does not prevent implantation. I recommend reading this article from JAMA, which is where I got most of my information. I particularly recommend scrolling down to the section entitled Mechanisms of Action of Plan B.
Honestly, I have no idea where this rumour about the mechanism of plan B got started, because everyone, and I mean *everyone* seems to think that it prevents implantation, but it’s just not true.
Jake, thanks for taking the time to comment.
You ask where people get the information about how Plan B works– we’ve had a long discussion on this tongue-in-cheek post where we went to the Plan B website to see what they had to say. Go2PlanB.com stated:
So, what would be prevented from attaching to the uterus? Certainly not an unfertilized egg– they don’t attach to the uterus. So, it would have to be a fertilized egg.
I understand that the word “may” can be taken two different ways– either as an uncertainty (“it may rain today”) or as permission to do something or as a course of action (“you may have the last pop tart”). Why is it, if there’s next to no chance that it could work against implantation, that they would mention it at all?
In this post we look at how safe Plan B is. Since it is mostly a concentrated form of the regular birth control pill, and the regular birth control pill works by preventing fertilization AND by preventing implantation, I would believe the concentrated form works the same way.
Again, *everyone* may seem to think that it works to prevent implementation– but that’s exactly what the website promoting it says it does. Why would they lie to us?