Tracking Your Fertility to Know when Emergency Contraception Will Be Non-abortive

For some people, it's not a big deal---they see conception and life as beginning at implantation. Birth control pill, morning after pill (if necessary) don't cause ethical hangups.

However, I'm addressing the people who have ethical concerns about using the morning after pill, because they believe life begins when a sperm and egg unite and they're worried about aborting a non-implanted embryo. Morning-after doesn't abort implanted ones.

Those of you who hold this view are probably quite comfortable with barriers and spermicides. But what happens if a condom breaks and you didn't use the spermicide that time? What's your backup.

Well, it can be Plan B or any of the other emergency contraceptives whose brand names I don't know as well (note, we're not talking about RU-486, which is geared towards early abortion). The key is knowing your fertility cycle.

You see, emergency contraceptives work by blocking your ovulation. If the body can't release an egg, it can't become fertilized and you won't become pregnant. They may also prevent the egg and sperm from meeting up...I'm not as clear on how it works, but that's what they say. And it's possible that they prevent an embryo from implanting.

Woah, you say. Back up. We don't want to hurt an embryo.

That's fine. There are many occasions where you don't have to and you can still take emergency contraceptives and the third part will never come into play.

(For this next part, we're going to assume that women ovulate on the 14th day of their cycle. This is a gross oversimplification which has lead to many unplanned pregnancies. But it works nicely for our purposes. I'll tell you more about figuring out your own cycle later.)

Now let's say that it's day 12 of your cycle and your condom breaks. You know you won't be ovulating for 2 more days, but you're also aware that sperm can live for 3-5 days (depending on who you listen to). Ok, there's no way to get them back. It's hard to magically flush the uterus.