Attack on women's reproductive health is even worse than I thought

I learned more today about the Department of Health and Human Services' proposal on reproductive health and pregnancy prevention.

For a long time the accepted definition of an established pregnancy (both by medical experts and HHS) was after implantation of the embryo into the uterus. Without implantation, the egg (or embryo) would be flushed from the body during the woman's next period. And more importantly, a pregnancy test would not come up positive.

Now HHS wants to change that definition to start at fertilization, even though there are no tests to show when fertilization occurs. Since there are no tests to prove/disprove fertilization, it would be extremely difficult for any woman to prove she's not pregnant. Some might argue that you'd known when you had your period, but having known many women who had a period at the beginning of their pregnancy, that doesn't hold up well.

Why is this such a big deal? Because current policy allows medical practitioners to choose whether or not they participate in providing abortions. The new policy allows them to choose what procedures are considered abortion - and whether they want to provide those procedures.

And here's where we get to the scary part - many in the religious right are pushing for contraceptives like the pill to be listed as a form of abortion because they believe they could prevent implantation of a fertilized egg, and thereby aborting the "pregnancy." And we're not talking about big doses of the pill - just your normal daily dose.

RH Reality Check, a site for info and analysis on reproductive health, has a good synopsis of it all.

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