Many people don't know that hormonal birth control pills can kill an unborn baby.
Or if you’ve heard the claims that birth control can act as abortifacients, maybe you dismissed them as myths when you did a simple google search and found articles similarly titled “Birth Control and Abortion: How they’re different - WebMD”. Maybe you breathed a sigh of relief after your doctor laughed and assured you, “birth control are not abortifacients”.
“Only the far-right, religious zealots would make an unscientific claim like that… it’s just another attempt to control women.”. I’ve seen feminists go to war on social media in an effort to defend the image of birth control. I can see why… It is a symbol of female empowerment and what brought a massive movement of women into the workplace. For some, birth control is sacred. And to be against birth control could be taken as personally as being against women.
Even christians and those who identify as pro-life will argue that being against birth control is taking it too far. “We’re about preventing abortions… not stopping people from preventing pregnancies. Come on now, you’re making the rest of us look bad.”
So why take on such a an extreme stance? Why do some, such as myself, go out on a limb to say birth control can cause abortions?
Can they?
It all depends upon whether or not you believe life begins at fertilization…
When it comes to the science, there are three different ways hormonal birth control was designed to prevent pregnancy.
1. Stopping or reducing ovulation.
2. Thickening the cervical mucus to prevent sperm from entering the uterus.
3. Thinning the lining of the uterus to prevent an already fertilized egg from implanting into the uterus and thus… killing the fertilized egg.
Hormonal birth control doesn’t just stop ovulation… it can kill a fertilized egg. This is a scientific fact. Clinical research doesn’t deny this. Doctors don’t deny this… But they’ll still tell you that they’re not “abortifacients”. And there’s a reason why they can get away with that.
According to the scientific community, pregnancy only begins after a fertilized egg has already implanted into the wall of the uterus. But this was not always the case. The medical community used to define conception and the beginning of a pregnancy as the moment sperm meets egg, or in other words… the start of a human being.
It wasn’t until 1965 that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists adopted a new definition,"conception is the implantation of a fertilized ovum.” Interestingly, this new definition took place five years after the first oral contraceptive was approved by the FDA (1960), and the same year that the Supreme Court ruled that married couples have a constitutional right to privacy which includes the right to use birth control, and the same year that The U.S. Agency for International Development’s population and reproductive health program began the goal of reducing birth rates in developing countries (1965). The timing of the change can only mean it was politically instead of scientifically motivated.
With this new definition of pregnancy, the ethical problems were out of the way. Doctors could now assure their patients that the pill only prevents pregnancy, and does not cause abortions… Just like they’re still telling you today.
As Christians, many of us hold the belief that life is sacred as soon as sperm meets egg. It is at that very moment that the fertilized egg already possesses all the DNA for a human being. The value of that life is not simply determined by the location of the baby (the implantation of the uterus). The value is the beginning of life itself.
So to answer the question - are birth control abortifacients? If the egg and sperm never meet, and only prevention of ovulation occurs, then the answer is no. But if the egg is fertilized, and there is a unique human life that is prevented from implanting into the uterus, then morally speaking - yes. It then becomes an abortion-inducing-drug. And unfortunately, there is no way to prevent this if you are being sexually active while taking the pill.
You might say that many fertilized eggs are never able to implant into the uterus anyway, and they die naturally before a woman ever knows she’s pregnant… While that’s true, what about the ones who would have implanted if they had been given a chance? And if allowed to continue their natural process, what if they could have developed into full-term pregnancies?
As someone who’s suffered through three miscarriage myself, I could never put myself in a position where I would knowingly take something that could intentionally kill my baby. I understand how fragile fertility can be. But I also understand the importance of protecting my fertility and protecting my baby’s chances of surviving if fertilization occurs… Because I believe in the sanctity of life.
I understand that so many women are unaware of this, and many women who value human life would probably be horrified to learn this if they were on birth control. But women deserve to know the truth about hormonal birth control. They deserve to know that they could be putting their children at risk.
If we are standing up for the right of the unborn - we must stand against all the ways unborn babies are being killed. Not enough people are bringing awareness to the fact that hormonal contraceptives can kill a baby. There are women who believe life is sacred at fertilization and they’re on the pill, because they’ve never been told the truth…
Women deserve better. Babies deserve to be protected.
And sometimes exposing a necessary truth comes at the cost of being labeled an extremist.