An abortificant by any other name is still an abortificant

I don't understand how people can miss the point, like Malcolm King did in his flaming of Jeremy Neal's letter on Thursday, September 24.

All of you can make up your own moral decisions and stances, but let's get the facts straight. Contraceptives are just that - ways to avoid conception. That's what contraception means.

Now, we all know of the more popular forms of contraception, condoms and diaphragms, stop the sperm from entering the uterus. Foam kills sperm, so they can't fertilize the egg.

Birth control pills inhibit ovulation (if the egg isn't there, it can't be fertilized).

However, the morning-after pill is NOT a contraceptive; it is an abortificant.

Conception begins when the sperm and egg unite to form what is called a zygote. Once this happens, the pregnancy has begun. A fertilized egg begins to grow immediately and has divided several times before it even reaches the uterus.

So, you can see that the morning-after pill does NOT stop conception, it aborts the already begun pregnancy. It should be of interest that the body recognizes a pregnancy even before it implants in the uterus. I knew a woman who was trying to become pregnant and her hormones fully indicated that she was pregnant, but the doctor could not find anything in her uterus. It turns-out that the embryo was floating around (unattached) in her abdomen. It never attached, but the body knew it was there and reacted accordingly.

You can argue all you want over the ethics of the morning-after pill, but let's put it in its true classification for what it does: The morning-after pill is an abortificant, not a contraceptive.

Jason Belnap
Mathematics Graduate Student