Invincible Ignorance, part 1,207

Swami has done it again--he has seriously misstated my views one more time. In a somewhat emotional post on pharmacists and conscience, Swami writes that Plan B is "nothing but a super-sized dose of birth control." He then goes on:

"For that matter, does LC understand this? If she does, does she support a pharmacist's right to refuse to fill birth-control prescriptions? My bet: She'd vote with the 'conscientious' pharmacists who will have nothing to do with birth-control in any form--because from where she sits, isn't birth control murder? Naturally, she doesn't say this. Why? Because you'd think she's some kind of hard-core wingnut woman-hater, and you'd never pay attention to her again."

For the record: You are free to call me a hard-core wingnut, if that is your wonted way of speaking, but I most certainly do not regard birth control as murder. The philosophical and theological (and I daresay biological) underpinnings of the Catholic Church's ban on abortion and artificial birth control are very different. Abortion is a right-to-life issue; contraception is not. The stricture rests on the idea that it is wrong (at least for a practicing Catholic) because it is sterile, or selfish, sex that is not open to procreation. For a fuller treatment of this subject see Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical on artificial contraception.

I will not belabor the point, Swami, not only because it might be too subtle for you but because I am still trying to explain papal infallibility to you. (I had questioned whether Plan B could be called contreption because it is used after sexual intercourse, and I was mystified at the idea of prevention after, to mix metaphors, the horse is out of the barn. But I have never said or even entertained the idea that contraception is murder, though it can lead to the death of love. You may realize this if you actually read Paul VI's prophetic encyclical.)