Dobbs no longer relevant. . .

In the continuing struggle over Roe and abortion rights, it might have seemed that the Dobbs case and the decision of the Supreme Court pretty much signaled where things were going.  Sure, there were states where the most liberal abortion stance would be enshrined in law but across the nation abortion was on the decline.  But all of that may matter less now that an over the counter contraceptive has been approved.  While abortion traditionally has been used a means of birth control -- more rather than less -- the methods were messy or less than pleasing.  A visit to a medical provider, a prescription, and visit to a pharmacy made the easy method of the birth control pill more work than the users desired.  A whole case could be made about the same for the IUD.  The male options are less than preferred -- one deemed less than pleasing for the user and the other requires another trip to the medical provider and its own follow up.  Even the morning after pill requires a trip to the proverbial apothecary.   But if the female birth control pill is purchased like acetaminophen and held on hand in the giant Sam's size bottle, the problem is decidedly reduced in complexity and cost.  It only remains for the user to remember to take it every day.  What could easier than that?

My point is this.  I am all in favor of not making it so easy.  I suppose a case could be made for preventing pregnancies among those who have no desire to be parents but at what cost?  The pill is not without its complications.  It technically does not quite do the same thing as a condom.  How the birth control pill works is first to prevent ovulation, and second, in case ovulation did occur, the pill's backup mechanism was designed to prevent the sperm from fertilizing the egg, but, the backup to the backup was to render the uterine wall inhospitable to any accidental zygote that may have formed if the first two steps failed.  All of this sounds rather sterile but the reality is we do not know how often the backup to the backup works and perhaps there is no way of knowing this.  In the end, it is not simply if the pill prevents the fertilized egg from attaching, thereby causing an abortion, but that it was designed to do just that.  We have become so very comfortable with this that now we see it virtually in the same terms as popping an ibuprofen when you feel a headache coming on.  That is the easy I am against.  

We have made sex so casual and easy and tried to prevent any responsibility or accountability for those who make the choice that it seems positively rude to disrupt the party by mentioning that procreation is not an accidental consequence of sex but is primary purpose.  Pleasure is a more the accidental consequence than a child.  While this seems hard and unfeeling to say, it is the truth.  We cannot overturn nature by a quick trip to the drug store or grocery store.  But that is exactly what we are trying to do or perhaps have already done by making the pill an over the counter purchase.  Abortion may not be quite as relevant as it was before this but both are a clear moral question and challenge to who we are as a society.  There used to be joke about the pregnant woman and "you know what causes that" but no one is getting that joke anymore...