How the Pill works

I was a bit confused recently because I saw this on Rachel Maddow, but Amanda Marcotte clears it up for me:

I don't know if you want to have some staff look into this, but hormonal forms of birth control work a little differently. They actually prevent implantation, not conception.

I saw this exchange posted everywhere with absolutely no correction of this blatant (if unintended) misinformation. Even Jezebel’s write-up unfortunately implied that killing fertilized eggs is an evidenced mechanism of the pill, and that it happens frequently, which it doesn’t. They made it worse by making fun of Mitt Romney for not knowing how the pill works. The problem with that is he actually showed a better understanding of it than either the woman asking him a question or the Jezebel writer. If you make fun of someone for being wrong, but they’re actually right, then you’re the one with egg on your face.

I get why feminists are allowing anti-choice misinformation to find home in our mouths. We want to tell people that personhood amendments are intended to ban the pill, because they are! The easiest way to say that is to accept the false premise that the pill kills fertilized eggs. And that will win us a short term victory, but lose us the long term war. Plus, bad science is bad science, and you shouldn’t give air to it.

Now that I hear this, I remember it being explained to me by my mother long ago, but just to repeat: the Pill works by preventing ovulation, not by preventing implantation. I'll remember that in the future.

And yes, even though it does prevent fertilization, Rick Santorum still wants to ban it.

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