The Calgary Sexual Health Center is celebrating today’s 40th anniversary the legalization of birth control and abortion, and the decriminalization of homosexuality — the law was passed in May 1969 but did not take effect until November 19 — with a ’60s-themed dance party called Revolution 69. The Pill is celebrated as a great breakthrough for women, but as some of the ladies at ProWomanProLife noted in a July symposium on contraceptive pills, it has isn’t quite the panacea its advocates envision.
I noted at the time at my blog Sobering Thoughts:
Pharmacists for Life explains that using the proper definition of the beginning of life (conception, not implantation) means that sometimes the oral contraceptive pill is abortifacient because it makes the womb inhospitable for a newly created embryo which therefore dies rather than receives the nourishment from its mother that is required to grow and live. These are indisputable scientific facts. We can disagree about whether the embryo has less right to life than a fetus, but the science seems pretty clear.
I went on to note how one comedian dealt with the issue and society’s priorities:
One last comment on The Pill and it comes from comedian Gary Gulman (the part on The Pill starts at 3:15) who said in his routine on Last Comic Standing a few years back and again during his Tourgasm comedy sketch, of all the pills in the world, the one known as The Pill is the one that prevents pregnancy:
It tells you where our priorities are as a country that that’s The Pill. There are a million pills, but that’s The Pill. There is a pill that keeps you from getting polio — that’s not the pill. Take this and it will save your life, take this you won’t have to buy condoms, that’s The Pill.
The contraceptive pill is sometimes abortifacient and can be harmful to women. The killing of pre-implantation embryonic human beings and the damage done to women is nothing to celebrate.
