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Originally Posted by TimV  Quote: |
For the sake of argument I am assuming that the Pill and other chemical contraceptives occasionally cause abortion. I do believe this is the case, and the people I have been discussing this with agree that it is the case. The disagreement is does this means that it can't be prescribed.
| Replace abortion with something else. If the pill is sinful because it may cause abortion then anything that causes a side effect that harms anyone is sinful.
Any medicine, sport, exercise, pipe smoking, etc.. is sinful, because they can all cause harmful side effects.
Really, folks, I do tree removal and bee and wasp exterminations. Monday I had to climb a huge oak tree that was too big for my safety harness to kill some aggressive bees 40 feet up. The chance of me hurting myself is a degree of magnitude greater than a married women who for reasons she and her husband believe are for her health takes responsible chemical birth control for a limited time.
It shouldn't be that difficult.
Ask yourself the question. On those grounds, that the pill could as a rare side effect cause abortion, would you make a complaint to the Session about it, and demand church discipline take place if the family doesn't desist? |
One obvious difference between this question and your examples is that an abortion ends the life of another individual. If you choose to put your life in danger by taking certain medications or participating in certain activities, then at least it is you who are responsible for your own death, should the unthinkable occur. If the pill causes abortions, then an innocent child's life is at stake because of its parents' alleged needs.
I'm not sure that the jury is out on the pill question. A new couple in my congregation, one of whom is in academia and has degrees from Harvard and Princeton, the other an MD, have stated that it would be impossible for a researcher to get the funds to do the necessary investigation, and that anyone who tried would probably lose their job, because of the ramifications of the research. Think of what a blow it would cause to the industry if there were peer-reviewed studies showing a link between hormonal birth control and abortion. For now, as far as I know, the allegations are hypotheses based on the fact that the morning after pill merely administers a higher dosage of the same hormones, but not based on some empirically derived amount which is known to surely stop implantation. We simply don't know at what dosage the effects include not merely the stopping of fertilization, but also the damage of the uterine wall to the point where implantation cannot occur during that cycle.