Outrage and Shame over Plan B in Connecticut

I have a set of grandparents who, back-in-the-day, used to be quite sharp and acerbic, they spoke the truth without regard to noses bent or feelings hurt (especially when it came to mine). But now, when they hear disagreement, they get a far-away look and glassy-eyed, they stare at the floor, shrug their shoulders and mumble something about diabetic shoes. They forget their manners and pretend you were not talking. They change the subject and undermine or even contradict previously held truths. Their former zeal for taking-down falsehoods now lost in a fog of daily talk-shows and newspaper gossip columns. It's like they have retired their minds.

The same "retirement of mind" appears to have happened to our Connecticut bishops. No longer willing to call Plan B an abortifacient (as, until very recently, even Plan B's website self-referred to as such), they issued a collective "far-away look" Thursday and mumbled at least 3 times that they are actually unsure what Plan B does. Let me refresh their memories from their own Connecticut Conference of Catholic Bishop's Q&A still, temporarily I presume, located on their website:

7) Connecticut�s Catholic hospitals have said that Plan B can sometimes cause an abortion. Is this correct?

The primary mechanism of Plan B is to prevent ovulation, and therefore conception.

The secondary mechanism of Plan B is to prevent the implantation of a fertilized ovum, which is abortion. This is confirmed on the manufacturer's web site that says, Plan B may also work by preventing it (the fertilized egg) from attaching to the uterus (womb).

8) Is it a true statement to say that forcing Catholic hospitals to provide Plan B under all cases is equivalent to forcing Catholic hospitals to perform an abortion?

Yes.

When Plan B cannot act as a contraceptive, it can only act to cause an abortion. Forcing Catholic hospitals to provide Plan B in these situations forces the hospitals to perform abortions.

Well, well. I don't know how they could have been more acerbic or truthful there. Nothing like plain-talkin to drive home a point. Now for the glassy-eyes from yesterday's press release . . .

The administration of Plan B pills in this instance cannot be judged to be the commission of an abortion because of such doubt about how Plan B pills and similar drugs work and because of the current impossibility of knowing from the ovulation test whether a new life is present. To administer Plan B pills without an ovulation test is not an intrinsically evil act.

Since the teaching authority of the Church has not definitively resolved this matter and since there is serious doubt about how Plan B pills work, the Catholic Bishops of Connecticut have stated that Catholic hospitals in the State may follow protocols that do not require an ovulation test in the treatment of victims of rape, . . . .

OK, now that I am sitting on my chair again, can we just address the little statement "because of the current impossibility of knowing . . . whether a new life is present." How many times have you sat in a college dorm, stood by the company water cooler, eaten at the family dinner table and had that nugget of wisdom spat at you. . . "Well, nobody knows if it's really a life, so abortion isn't killing." That line is so, well, 1980s. If the bishops are going to start spewing pro-choice propaganda, they should at least bring their arguments into the current century and claim while a fertilized egg may be alive, it isn't a person.

Next. Who was the lucky person at the CT Conference that had the task of so blatantly backtracking from the Bishop's noble and forceful original position? I hope it wasn't Barry Feldman, that poor guy looks like he is about to get a case of the vapors every time I see him on TV.

Besides arguing that they should err on the side of destroying life, the Bishops make a crucial blunder by suggesting they have no moral obligation to provide an ovulation test. How queer, I thought the debate was about abortion, not ovulation tests. What the bishops have done, perhaps unknowingly, is misdirect the focus of the debate to ovulation tests and create an effective diversion. It is a cheap debating trick used by every high school debate team.

"To administer Plan B pills without an ovulation test is not an intrinsically evil act" they state. What about administering Plan B without a pregnancy test? Would that be "intrinsically evil"? I think so. And to those people (i.e. Catholics) who equate the soul of a fertilized egg with the soul of a gestating baby, what difference should there be? Both deserve a test before being subjected to a deadly drug. And suppose there was no accurate test? Then we must err on the side of life and not administer the deadly drug at all. The Bishops have made a heart-sickening slight of hand. Claiming if they avert their eyes, then no evil is taking place.

The alternative to testing, isn't administering Plan B blindfolded, it is to not administer Plan B at all. Avoiding culpability because they didn't "know" or refused to "know" smacks me of moral relativism.

I also find their choice of the word "intrinsic" interesting. Intrinsic, is defined, in part, as "belonging to the essential nature or constitution of a thing". If something is "intrinsically evil", it is evil without regard to knowledge or purpose. Causing abortions IS intrinsically evil even if you don't know for sure you did it. Knowledge is irrelevant. I think the word the bishops, or their lowly attorney, was actually searching for was "intentional". Administering Plan B without an ovulation test could possibly not be "intentionally evil", but judgment will be deferred on that question to a later day and a much higher Judge.

I have more to say on this topic, but have to defer completion till tomorrow. . .