Zero-th trimester abortions

If anyone could please answer any of the following questions, I'd be much obliged:

1. Why is this morning after pill raising such a ruckus?
2. Is it fundamentally different than the older, daily Ortho-whathaveyous?
3. Are there really even that many pharmacists denying women the drug?
4. Does this seem to anyone else like another pointless "moral" touchstone like poor, vegetative Terri?

Argh, I was going to use these questions to rouse you to action but I just got curious and figured out number 2 myself.

The morning after pill works on the same principle as the daily pill. Essentially it messes with the levels of progestin [and also sometimes estrogen] in a woman's body, effectively preventing conception from occuring.

Given that, the only conceivable reason I can imagine for the current moral impetus against this drug--which has existed for years, and was actually recommended for over the counter sale in 2003--can only be that a perception exists that taking it after intercourse means you are also taking it after conception, effectively aborting the 4 cells that would become a human child. Another reason being the current hegemony of faith-based legislators.

I can sympathize with pharmacists not wanting to be connected in any way to abortion. Many people are uncomfortable with abortion. The subsection of doctors and even OB/GYNs who perform abortions is small, and these doctors can certainly decide for themselves if they want to conduct those procedures. I am certain there are physicians who are pro-choice in principle, and still can't bring themselves to orchestrate the procedure.

But allow me to direct the medically-trained, morally-outraged pharmacists to teenwire.com. There they will find a question by caezeriv. He/she asks: "How long does it take for the sperm to get to the egg in a woman?" Teenwire's answer: "It can take up to six days after intercourse for sperm and egg to join and form a fertilized egg. Usually, it's because the sperm gets into the fallopian tube before the egg is released." So concievably, the drug could be prescribed as the Five Mornings After pill and you'd still have a comfortable window to avoid being accomplice to a Zero-th term abortion.

It is further vital to note that the morning after pill is ineffective once the egg has seated itself in the uterine lining and pregnancy, in a technical sense, has begun.

That is to say: the morning after pill is obviously not an abortion pill.

But the argument upon which the moral objection rests will probably not be what ultimately decides if pharmacists are required to prescribe the pill. The final judgement might not have anything to do with morality at all.

Senator Frank Watson of Illinois is a pharmacist by trade. He believes forcing pharmacists to sell the pill is "an infringement on a business decision."

This is the opaque realm of State regulation, herein free-market/government-control quagmires dwell.

It may just be here, where liberals confidently tread, that they finally stumble. Suddenly the question is not one of ethical responsibility, but of the struggle between state regulation and free-trade principles. To whit: Is a pharmacy like a traditional business? If pharmacies are deemed to be just businesses, with little or no special status as government regulated entities, then it doesn't seem likely that the constitution would allow for the government to force people to sell a product they don't want to. In a free market system, I might be pissed that I can't buy a Jaguar in Elk, Washington, but I can't expect my state representative to be able to do anything about it.

However, if--and this is another thing you people who know more than me should look into--if pharmacists have some kind of special status, being one of a very small percentage of people who are allowed to legally distribute controlled substances, then it seems likely that the FDA or even state-level agencies should be compelled to enact such a provision. It could easily be argued that in exchange for the priviledge of doing business in a limited, government-regulated marketplace, it's not much for government to ask that the pharmacist offer every drug the government has deemed safe and legal.

The extent to which the government is empowered to controll the flow of prescription drugs, in short, may end up dictating the final outcome more than politiking will.

That is not to say there would not be political ramifications. What were to happen if someone decided he didn't want to give out AZT or whatever because HIV is God's punishment of queers and race-mixers? He'd get fired from Walgreen's, but what if he owned his own pharmacy? What power would the government have to force him? Take a more mundane drug like Claritin. Remove the moral non-dilemma from the equation and see what happens.

Of course, with a faith-based legislature, this quasi-moral righteousness rules legislation.

Even without the sex police, this is very dicey territory for pro-choice advocates because in pushing to spread the availability of sexual health options like the morning after pill, they are also seeking to limit the kind of choice freedoms many [moderate] people feel are mandated by the constitution and by a free-market. In the sense that they may be accused of limiting personal freedoms, this dangerous territory is largely unknown to social liberals.

The waters are murky and the stakes are high, but most trepidatious, the payoff is uncertain. The Times suggests no one is really sure how big an issue this is--to what extent it is being inflated by both conservatives and liberals--and advocates of reproductive health risk alienating large swaths of people, moderates certainly and even libertarian leaning democrats for what may amount to a battle for a few small towns in the heartland.

This is a non-issue in cities of any size, where even if one pharmacist denies the prescription, it would most likely be filled by another. That only leaves isolated rural towns and communities in danger of having this drug denied altogether.

So if the issue is forced, and people feel they are being asked to choose between the guarantee of a bail out pill and what can be spun to resemble an erosion of personal and market liberties, I think a lot of people who are normally perfectly fine with such drugs will bolt, leaving social liberals with a few very happy country folk and a whole lot of scorched earth.