I will try to answer in more detail later, but hCG can only be detected in a women’s blood after implantation. The hCG has to have a way to make it into the blood, and it can’t get there before the early embryo has implanted and connected directly with the mother’s circulatory system.

I never said that because an embryo does not implant, it is not a person. What I did say is that if it is a person, most people die in their first few days of life. There is a theological question as to why the majority of people conceived would never be born. It does not mean that an early embryo is not a person, although some would argue that it would not make sense for God to design the human reproductive system so that most persons who were conceived died within a few days. For Christians, this means they can never be baptized. For some Christians, who believe explicit recognition of Jesus as one’s personal savior is necessary for salvation, it means most people conceived go to hell. For Catholics, it means the fate of most persons is totally unknown, since the Church has no explanation to what happens to those who die before birth.

TWX,

The answer to your first question is yes. Implantation is the process during which the developing embryo burrows into the wall of the uterus, and that takes about 48 hours to complete successfully. (About half of the time, it fails.) So it makes perfect sense to say “prior to the earliest time of implantation.”

But in the same paragraph it says EC acts sometimes by inhibiting implantation.

No, actually it says, “In addition, it may inhibit implantation (by altering the endometrium).” This is not a statement that some of the time, Plan B works by inhibiting implantation. It is a statement that one of the mechanisms by which the drug works may be (not is) by inhibiting implantation. It means that inhibiting implantation also may not be one of the mechanisms by which the drug works. Nobody is really sure.

Simply put, if a pregnancy test is positive before implantation, does the Federation, ACOG, AMA, or some other collection of 3 button suits tell the woman she is not pregnant?

Pregnancy tests are negative if an egg has been fertilized but has not implanted. The pregnancy tests used today measure a hormone in the woman’s body that is present only if implantation has taken place. So when a woman undergoes a “pregnancy” test, it is really an implantation test. This is one reason why it makes sense to consider pregnancy as beginning with implantation. It is easily measured. Another reason is that if you consider a woman pregnant at the time of conception, there is up to an 80% chance (estimates vary) that she will lose the “baby.” Most early embryos do not successfully implant. Why would one want to confirm fertilization when 80% of the time there will be no implantation and no possibility of a baby developing?

The fact is that if you consider successful fertilization to be the beginning of a new human person, the majority of “people” do not live more than a week or ten days.

First, Plan B and the pill both work primarily by preventing ovulation. They also seem to work against fertilization if ovulation has already occurred. There is no definitive proof that Plan B (or, I believe, the pill) prevents implantation.

Here’s the pertinent statement from the packaging:

Emergency contraceptives are not effective if the woman is already pregnant. Plan B® is believed to act as an emergency contraceptive principally by preventing ovulation or fertilization (by altering tubal transport of sperm and/or ova). In addition, it may inhibit implantation (by altering the endometrium). It is not effective once the process of implantation has begun.

Wikipedia tells us:

According to the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, “EC [emergency contraception] is not an abortifacient because it has its effect prior to the earliest time of implantation.” EC was once thought to have a possible post-fertilization effect on implantation of a blastocyst, a type of contraception which is sometimes referred to as a contragestive. However, the current scientific consensus is that this mechanism is extremely unlikely. EC acts to prevent pregnancy, and is therefore distinct from medical abortion methods that act after implantation.

And yet I think there is a sense that the cause of life has been making some slow, incremental advance. Just looking at public surveys, political discourse, and abortion rates, it seems likely that support for abortion peaked around 1990 – about when the baby boom generation was really coming into its own as the mature driving demographic force in the country. Since then, reservations about abortion have been creeping back up, as manifested in lower abortion rates, higher public self-identification as pro-life, and an increasing raft of abortion restriction legislation (enacted and proposed) in many states.

Why so? Ultrasounds definitely play a big role. So does medical technology, as it pushes back the threshold of viability. The fact that pro-life families are more likely to reproduce themselves. And what we see in the media, as in films like Juno may be a reaction to that rather than a cause. Perhaps the country is not quite ready to ban abortion outright, but in most states it seems quite willing to restrict it a great deal more than is currently the case.

People are fiddling with the limits of when an abortion may be performed. What they are not doing is challenging the central logic of abortion itself. They have not suddenly decided that an unborn child has intrinsic human worth from conception. They are not repudiating the idea that an unborn child acquires human worth only after some period of development. This is an objective good in that it reduces the number of abortions being performed, but it does not constitute ‘victory.’ It means we are becomeing more sophisticated and nuanced and selective in the destruction of our own chidlren.

carl