[you're a little bit rock 'n roll]
last week i took a class in the bioethics department at trinity called "emerging issues in reproductive technology and women's health". i've been excited about this class for a while. in counseling women reproductive issues [infertility, contraception, ivf, surrogacy, egg donation] tend to come up a lot.
i'm going to be writing a paper soon, but some of my initial takeaways are:
1) people who are part of the pro-life movement aren't all down south fundamentalist holy rollers. [that sentence has got to offend people.]
2) few people in the pro-life movement would carry on a pregnancy that would ultimately kill the mother. that viewpoint is rather rare.
3) abortion is pretty terrible for women [not just unborn babies]. so is egg donation.
4) you want your OB/GYN to be pro-life. and you can find one here.
5) i LOVE the way that some of these people are engaging these issues. they aren't just telling women that they're murderers and quoting scripture. they're fighting by advocating women's health [both physical and mental], and seeking charitable dialogue.
i took a lot more notes [and learned a lot more] about IVF, surrogacy, and infertility among Christian women. it's a lot of stuff, but let me know if you want to talk about it. the short story? i think i might like some of the Catholic viewpoint on these issues specifically [obviously, not all of their views on reproduction].
probably my biggest takeaway was this one [especially for women who are deciding on contraceptive methods]: in 1969 ACOG [American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists] changed the definition of the word "conception". Previous to that point the general consensus was that fertilization=conception=pregnancy. the shift was to implantation=conception. the result there is that contraceptives [read: contra-against, ceptives-conception] could be marketed as such as long as they prevented implantation. however, previous to 1969 this would have been seen as abortive. so, when asking your doctor if a contraceptive is abortive, he/she can safely say no as long as these conditions are met.
oh and also, i. still. love. adoption.
