Ethics of Preventing Implantation
The intention of a woman to prevent pregnancy is an important factor in whether or not the act of contraception is seen as abortive by some pro-life groups. Hormonal contraceptives have a possible effect of preventing implantation of a blastocyst, as discussed previously. Use of these drugs with the intention of preventing pregnancy is seen by some pro-life groups as immoral. This is because of the possibility of causing the end of a new human life.
However, hormonal contraception can also be used as a treatment for various medical conditions. When implantation prevention is unintentionally caused as a side effect of medical treatment, such pro-life groups do not consider the practice to be immoral, citing the bioethical principle of double effect. Likewise, when a hormonal contraceptive is used with the intention of preventing fertilisation, the intended reduction in implantation failures, miscarriages and deaths from childbearing may outweigh the possibility that the method might cause some implantation failures.
A related application of the principle of double effect is breastfeeding. Breastfeeding greatly suppresses ovulation, but eventually an ovum is released. Luteal phase defect, caused by breastfeeding, makes the uterine lining hostile to implantation and as such may prevent implantation after fertilization. Some pro-choice groups have expressed concern that the movement to recognize hormonal contraceptives as abortifacient will also cause breastfeeding to be considered an abortion method.
Read more about this topic: Beginning Of Pregnancy Controversy
Famous quotes containing the words ethics of, ethics, preventing and/or implantation:
“Indeed the involuntary character of psychiatric treatment is at odds with the spirit and ethics of medicine itself.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“After the earthquake, which had destroyed three-quarters of Lisbon, the country’s wise men had found no more efficacious means of preventing total ruin than to give the people a fine auto-da-fé.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“A cynic might conclude that the real purpose of the $500 million-a-year implant business is the implantation of fat in the bellies and rumps of underemployed plastic surgeons.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)