About Banning Birth Control

In our post-Dobbs world, the question has come up whether birth control can be banned. You can look at this as a rights question and as a science question.

Calling it a rights question may or may not get you points in the world of well-ordered liberty that Justice Alito has constructed. This is especially the case if you equate liberty with progress. Conservatives believe in truths, not moving on from them. It's how they think.

Birth control was not an issue until chemical birth control was invented in 1960. Before that, the question was sterilization - and then the Church was on the right side - that people had a right to reproduce regardless of whether they were "feebleminded"  

One hundred years ago, people with Downs Syndrome - or other mental deficits (or ethnicities) were sterilized, mostly against their will. Here's a question - is Down's Syndrome contagious, i.e., do sperm and egg contain an abnormal number of chromosomes in the second generation? There have to be studies. Just saying.

Conservatives responding to the promptings of the Catholic Church on contraception may or may not create an establishment clause issue. It has certainly become a political coalition issue. Where do we draw the line? Birth control makes sex easier, but does it really kill an individual? Luckily, the science is clear. It does not. Any pharmacist who won't give out Plan B for moral reasons should ask for a refund from their university and ask their employer to be shifted to the Deli or the Meat Department - or maybe the Coffee station.

In 10th grade biology, we learned about the difference between generative and regulative development. In generative development, the fertilized egg copies itself but there is no differentiation. If you cut off a cell, there is no impact on the resulting organism. The advance of science has confirmed this. Before gastrulation, a blastocyst is a chorion (which becomes the afterbirth) and a collection of stem cells. Cut this in half and you get twins. 

Before Pope John Paul II and the publication of Evangelium Vitae (which was ghosted by a cardiologist, not an embryologist), this used to be seen as proof that life did not begin at conception. The position that it did has become Catholic Branding - and the pro-life movement allows such branding to go unchallenged, even though it is wrong. 

Note that there are still conservative Catholics who believe in the historical reality of Adam and Eve. They don't believe in Darwin because that would call their belief in Original Sin into question - which upsets their view of salvation as punishment for man's sins. It is a more serious moral quandary than we give them credit for. Allow birth control and evolution as progress and they may have to find a different view of sin and salvation. That impacts the First Amendment in a different way.

Sin obviously does exist, because we created it - hook, line and sinker. Without law, there can be no sin (if I remember the Book of Romans correctly). Without sin, there is no need for salvation. The reality is that sin and harm do not need an origin story to demand our attention, but how we overcome it must still be dealt with. Jesus said it was forgiveness. The Buddha said compassion and detachment. These are basically the same things.

I could go on about how the crucifixion is a divine vision quest. If you are interested, search my website or buy my books on Amazon.

Again, my point is that, for some Catholics, this issue is more central than most people know, so be gentle with them - especially the LGBTQ+ (asexual) priests who are not even out to themselves.

Now, back to the science. Until gastrulation, the embryo can have no moral claim to self-existence. If you can cut it in half and get two embryos, it is not a unique life. The electrochemical coordination that happens with regulative development, which we can call a materialistic soul and which continues to govern the organism until death, has not yet entered the building. Until it does, only maternal genes (those of the chorion) control development.

Before pro-lifer's see this as a line for when to ban abortion - which it could be - they should cool their jets. The justification on when to ban abortion has nothing to do with the existence of a set of rights attached to a fetus. It is about how much government intrusion must be allowed into all pregnancies. If you regulate one kind of D&C, you must regulate all of them. This is an unsavory prospect for anyone who has lost a child to miscarriage. 

OK, we need to sequay back into abortion.

How many grieving families must be interviewed in order to save a fetus form abortion. For many, the answer is none, which means no abortion ban before the 20th week. Between weeks 12 and 20 (and between 20 and viability), the questions are when can abortion be regulated and how. The answer is not so hard. After week 20, and maybe earlier, abortion can be limited to inducing birth. 

Whatever is the earliest point that birth can be induced can be the abortion line - but the question on whether to induce should be, in most cases, up to the woman and her doctor. If society does not like post 20 week abortions of Down's Syndrome children, it must show us the money. Families with these children must be given respite care and adequate support. 

The demand on society cannot end there, however. People abort their Down's children because they are afraid that the children will be impoverished after the parents have died. That solution is not hard to deal with. Simply increase SSI for Down's Children (and others) to median income levels with no work requirement that is not therapeutic.  SSDI must also go up. (Show me the money). Also retirement. Indeed, tying such income to earnings must be reduced. The "employer contribution" needs to be credited on an equal dollar basis, uncapped and funded with a consumption tax.

In other words, put up or shut up. Taxes on the "makers" must go up. Children and the disabled must be given a bigger slice of the pie. When they are, the pie grows. When the rich keep that money, the pie shrinks - with the excess going into the Wall Street gambling casino. The choice is really not hard if it is laid out as a pro-life issue.

One final visit to the science lab. Consider the following experiment and the moral question involved. It is a variation on cloning.

Instead of implanting an IVF embryo ASAP, wait until it becomes a blastocyst (assume this is possible). Before implantation, evacuate the stem cells from the chorion and replace them with the stem cells of a living person. After implantation, gastrulation is a sure thing. These stem cells, unlike those of those evacuated, are proven to be genetically viable (this is why embryonic stem cells are useless for research in most cases). The child will develop and be born. Males would be named Barabbas and females Bateema. Whose souls do these children have?

The souls of the cells that were evacuated - and of the chorion?

The souls of the stem cell donor?

Do they have no soul - are they an abomination?

Their own souls?.

Put in this way, the answer is obvious. Granted, if you time the birth to be astrologically similar to the donor, the offspring will seem like a part of them, but that is familiarity rather than unity. Cloning is simply twinning with a longer time horizon.

This also shows that, prior to gastrulation and the formation of a unique electrochemical soul, there is no child there. A collection of cells in a chorion is no more morally significant than a collection of adult stem cells in a petri dish - or any other kind of cell culture. Neither my absent tonsils, my right adrenal gland or the cyst removed from my throat a few years ago have moral agency. Neither does a blastocyst. Again, anyone with a Pharmacy Degree that is not aware of this needs to get a refund and ask to transfer to deli.

Note, this material has been posted before. Sadly, it is still current. Pass it on.