Plan "B"

Press Release: Does Plan B Really 'Prevent Pregnancy'? Only if You Practice Linguistic Deception

First of all, let me say that these people have it mostly right. I (along with most scientists, but I honestly don't care what they think) believe that "life" begins when the sperm hits the egg. That's why it's called "conception". This pill (Plan B) doesn't keep that from happening, it only keeps the egg from attaching to the uterine wall "an event that generally takes place about a week after fertilization", effectively aborting an otherwise viable life.

I found two things interesting here though. The first is that this group completely fails to mention that oral contraceptives ("The Pill") work in exactly the same way. I'm not surprised they left it out- The Pill is something that most Americans have bought into as being a safe and perfectly reasonable form of birth control, and putting anything in there about The Pill would only further make them look like wackos to the unbelievers.

My wife and I only found out the truth about The Pill (and depo-provera) after doing some math with a "how the reproductive system works" book and then nailing my wife's OBGYN to the wall on the matter. (for some reason, I used to go on doctor visits with her. I guess because we were talking about birth control. He was a great guy and she'd always get ticked off when he and I would start to talk about computers while she was spread-eagle and he was examining her...)

US:	So doc, she's on this pill, and it keeps us from getting pregnant. How's that work?
Doc:	Well, see, there are these hormones, and this gives her a lot of it, so the uterus is so hostile that sperm just can't get through.
US:	But sometimes they do?
Doc:	Well, see, sometimes, yes, they can. But the egg can't attach to the wall, so you still can't get pregnant.
US:	So if method one fails, then this drug will cause her body to abort the pregnancy?
Doc:	Well, see, you won't be pregnant because the egg won't be able to attach.
US:	But it could be fertilized, and we'd never even know it.
Doc:	Well, see, that probably doesn't happen much.
US:	But it does happen- the fertilized embryo, post conception, will be aborted.
Doc:	Well, see, not so much "aborted", but, it just can't attach. It will come out during her monthly cycle.

Now, I'm not some Catholic who doesn't think you should use a condom, because that's actually preventing the pregnancy. It keeps the sperm from hitting the egg, so there's never a "life" per se. I'm not any kind of Catholic at all, actually. I'll fully rant about religion in another post.

This is the thing in this release that really caught my eye:

"This simple fact should have caused the FDA to deny approval in the first place; it would have, if the FDA were being honest rather than serving as mouthpieces for the pro- abortion cartel. Never in the history of America has a drug that is known to kill people been sold over the counter."

I love "pro-abortion cartel" - that's something I would come up with. This thing about "Never... has a drug that is known to kill people been sold over the counter" is absolutely crazy, and makes them look ignorant. Here's the short list:

*	Tylenol	Yes, people OD on Tylenol all the time, it doesn't take a lot. In fact, if you have any T3 (Tylenol and codeine) lying around and decide to off yourself, you'll OD from the Tylenol long before the codeine gets a chance to even make you nauseous. Go figure.
*	Tobacco; cigarettes, chewing, etc	Sold over the counter and known to contain many drugs that are known to kill. They kill LOTS of people. There's even a warning on the box saying so. I'm not trying to rant on these products, I don't even care, I'm just trying to make a point about OTC drugs that kill people on a regular basis.
*	Alcohol	A CNS depressant, sold over the counter and known to kill people directly via alcohol poisoning and indirectly as a result of impaired drivers.

No matter how the opponents can screw up a press release, Plan B is still seriously bad news- the abortion clinics will go out of business but the abortion rate will skyrocket-- we'll just call it "avoiding pregnancy".

Write your congressman.

Discuss:

Time passing

I should mention that my jury duty only lasted 3 days, not an entire year.

Jury duty completed

After being on a Jury now, I understand the often talked about possibility of having professional jurors. Common people just might not be able to handle it.

This was a pretty cut-and-dry case. The law in OK says, that if you do damage to another vehicle while operating your own, then you are liable for those damages. If multiple people cause damage to another vehicle, each person is fully responsibile for the damages.

The defendant in this case didn't think that she should pay for the damage ($17,000 for a small transit bus that she totaled) because of, well, I guess because (a) someone cut her off (b) she couldn't walk for a year and (c) she's been through enough already. But the bus was minding its own business driving south in the southbound lane of a major divided highway when she crossed from the northbound lanes into his lane and plowed into him head on. The defense did nothing to show that she didn't do it, they admitted to that. No one ever found this car that "cut her off" causing her to leave her side of the 4-lane and head into oncomming traffic, so she just thought that we should find him and make him pay. But the LAW says that, even if there was another car involved, they would BOTH be FULLY liable for the damages.

It was a clear case of "if you think that the defendant is liable, check this box. if you think the defendant is not liable, check this box." Our first vote was something like 7 to 5, and we needed 9 to convict her or set her on her way. In the end, the vote was 10 to 2 in favor of the law and the plantiff. The two hold outs were of the opinion that "she didn't deserve it" and "her lawyer was nicer."

Now my wife has been through a week (7 days, actually) of jury duty and ran into an even more clear-cut case. There is a contract that is signed by two parties and says that the first party will pay the second party 16 cents and then some per day per horse, for "any" contracts that the first party gets for keeping these horses. The first party (the defendants in this case) basically decided that he didn't want to pay the second party (the plantiff) because he "didn't feel like it" and "he didn't work enough to deserve it." The contract, by the way, doesn't stipulate what the second part had to do to earn his 16 cents per horse per day, but he still did a lot, including photographing, mapping, and calculating the total volume of water in over 100 ponds, and making two trips, at his own expense, to Nevada. The contract didn't say he had to do any of this, he just did. The defendant admitted to falsifying contracts to show a lessor amount of money. The defendant admitted on the phone that he was cheating the plantiff out of his money (the plantiff secretly recorded the conversation- that's legal in Oklahoma by the way) and managed to get in quite a few swear words. But the swearing cheating defedant is an elder at his church. That was part of his defense. Does this case sound any easier? There really aren't any more facts. When she got into the jury room, only 3 people thought they should find for the plantiff. Why? Because he said "yes m'am" and "thank you" and was polite. They thought he was lying and being rude by saying "yes m'am". And he didn't "do enough work" to earn the $500,000+ that the contract said he was owed. It took 7 hours for my wife and three others to convince 6 other people that he was at least due the money owed on half of the horse deals. These 9 other people wern't even smart enough to realize that they already had 9 votes in their favor and didn't need any further deliberation. Are you kidding me!? 9 people wanted to completely ignore the law and make their own decision based on emotions and facts that had nothing to do with the case!

Both of these cases really should never have gone to court- the law is clearly in favor of one party, but apparently the lawers know that jurors aren't smart enough to follow the law, they'd rather ignore it and follow their emotions.

I was more than happy to serve as a juror, because it's one of my few responsibilities as a US citizen. But maybe the old saying about "12 of your peers who aren't even smart enough to get out of jury duty" is all too true.