Yesterday in my gym’s female locker room, I noticed a blue Plan B poster depicting a sperm entering an egg hanging where there are usually posters promoting Breast Cancer awareness or ALS awareness. I looked around and saw 4 others. Obviously, I lodged a complaint (I’m very popular now, I’m sure).
Since the posters are new, I wondered if Plan B was planning a new ad campaign with their shiny new posters. The website certainly looks updated, and once you get past the options to download their new “sperm font” and sperm screensaver, you’ll find claims like this one:
IS PLAN B AN ABORTION PILL?
Absolutely not. It may be comforting to know that plan B does not work if you are already pregnant (a fertilized egg has attached to the wall of the uterus). So if you take plan B, you will not be terminating a pregnancy. However, if you already have a confirmed pregnancy, you should not use plan B because it will not be effective.
So why does Plan B want to provide this kind of “comfort”? Well, because as Jeanne Monahan, director of the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, so eloquently said, “The difference between preventing life and destroying life is hugely significant to many women. Women deserve to know the difference.”
According to Plan B’s claims, pregnancy only occurs once a fertilized egg has attached to the uterine wall. This generally occurs 7 days after conception. That’s right, 7 days, a week, after fertilization. Was a women not pregnant for that week? Not according to the Princeton WordNet,
Noun
S: (n) pregnancy, gestation, maternity (the state of being pregnant; the period from conception to birth when a woman carries a developing fetus in her uterus)
Other dictionaries’ definition of pregnancy vary from edition to edition, sometimes contradicting themselves in the same edition. But whatever the printed page says, women DO deserve to know the difference and determine that definition for themselves, rather than have a pharmaceutical company define it for them. Plan B, as they stated on their site, prevents a fertilized egg, already starting to grow, from staying in the uterus. For many people, that is terminating a pregnancy.
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Andrea asks: I’m wondering a) How you phrased your complaint? and b) How the gym responded?
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Jennifer replies: As the gym I am a member of happens to be my employer, I felt comfortable leaving my co-worker, the marketing supervisor, a voicemail (since she was unavailable on the Sunday). I stated that 1) The posters were present where employees under the age of consent have access (under the age of 16) and 2) I have ethical issues working in an environment that advertises PlanB, which I consider to be an abortifacient. I asked her to get back to me and said I could write a formal complaint if need be. We’ll see what happens!
by 
The definition of pregnancy has been deliberately changed by the medical establishment.
It used to be that pregnancy began with fertilization.
But with the advent of abortion politics and the pill, all this has changed.
Pregnancy is now defined as implantation.
The reason being that pregnancy is framed as something that happens to the woman, not the beginning of human life.
So when does “something happen to the woman”? When the conceptus implants.
It avoids the ethical dilemma of “ending a pregnancy” when it comes to blastocysts– because there’s no pregnancy to end!
So according to that definition, Plan B is not an abortion pill.
But pro-lifers conceive of pregnancy as the beginning of human life. So what happens to the unborn is what is primary.
Always keep that in mind when discussing abortion. Pro-lifers and poor-choicers have different definitions or abortion, pregnancy and sometimes human life.
Bravo, Jennifer, for taking a stand on this. I hope that you can enter a good discussion with your employer. I am sure that you will do well, you are well spoken and a lady as well. We need more women like you out there.
Jennifer: I second Julie’s bravo for taking a stand on this. Please keep us posted on the outcome.
Sounds like the same ad I came across in a bathroom while at York U visiting pro-life students.
“Oh,” I thought. “I guess this is why York needs a pro-life presence….”