Government attempts to redefine the word “marriage” are causing a bit of a furore at the moment but redefinition of facts is something that has happened before, in the field of family and social issues.
In the Summer edition of its newsletter number 66, ALDU considered how people were being misled over the meaning of the word “conception” in order to make the so called ‘morning after’ pill easier to market. In particular this was necessary for the abortion industry so that this pill could be sold to women, without the tiresome necessity of having to comply with the abortion law.
Below is the article with a list of dictionary references some, if not all, of which may by now have been revised to meet current needs.
A Rose is a Rose is a Rose
A year ago, in our Summer 1994 Newsletter, in our article on page 2 entitled 'Conception', we wrote once again about the way in which the words "conception" and "miscarriage" had been, and were still being, manipulated so that abortifacients like the so-called 'morning-after' pill and the famous RU486 could be put across to the public (and thus be prescribed by doctors and used by women) as if they were mere contraceptives.
We noticed that in the spring of this year, (1995), the Family Planning Association (FPA) and the Health Education Authority got together to launch what they call the "Contraceptive Education Service". According to a report by the Medical Editor of the Independent in the Tuesday 28th March 1995 issue of that newspaper, this is a one-million-pound campaign to persuade women to use what the Head of Information at the FPA calls "emergency contraception"; apparently this lady at the FPA went on to say that the name "morning-after" pill was misleading. It seems clear to us that the re-naming of the procedure is intended to imply that what is involved in the use of the morning-after pill is contraception when, in fact, it is abortion.
Similarly, the Daily Telegraph, in its 'Guide' to what it wrongly described as "Emergency Contraception" in its issue of Tuesday 28th March 1995, in reply to the question "How do these Emergency Pills work?" replied as follows :-
"Not exactly clear, but believed to prevent implantation of a fertilised egg, and to stop an egg being released. They do not disrupt an existing pregnancy, so are not a method of very early abortion."
Re-Definition
This is all another example of an attempt to re-define the word "conception" in the hope that people will come to think that conception is a long-drawn-out process which begins when an egg is fertilised with a sperm but which is not complete until the embryo implants in the womb. (Contrast this with the much more authoritative and absolutely clear definitions at the end of this article, - definitions which were universally accepted until the killing of very young human beings in their early embryonic state became a political requirement.)
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| How Your Life Began - Dr Roger Pilkington |
Pregnancy, it is now being falsely said, does not begin until the 6 or 7 day-old boy or girl implants himself or herself into the lining of his or her mother's womb, even though during those 6 or 7 days the woman has of course been very much pregnant, with her tiny baby having been growing and developing in a marvellous way and at an astonishing speed ever since he or she began to exist at the moment of fertilisation when the "explosion of new life" occurred. For the details, see the revised edition of Pregnancy by Gordon Bourne, F.R.C.S., F.R.C.O.G., first published by Cassell and Co. Ltd. in 1972, and see also How Your Life Began by Dr Roger Pilkington, M.A., a Family Doctor booklet published by the British Medical Association. [On page 11, this BMA booklet states "To think of life as beginning at birth is rather misleading. Life begins at conception."]
This campaign is a central part of the Department of Health's declared aim of reducing the number of teenage pregnancies by at least half before the year 2000, ('Health of the Nation' - Department of Health). The reasons for the DoH's eagerness are clear, as one gathers that the cost of supplying the morning-after pill to effect the early abortion is only 8p., - considerably cheaper than a surgical abortion. The key thing to note is that there will be absolutely no reduction at all in the number of teenage pregnancies nor any change in the lifestyle which produces such pregnancies; the only result will be that the pregnancies which do occur will be aborted earlier and will not be officially recorded.
Another advantage for the perpetrators of this modern form of abortion is that, thanks to the attempted redefinition of "conception" and "pregnancy", they hope there will be no need for the abortionist to concern himself with filling in abortion notification forms and that everyone concerned will escape the provisions of the Abortion Act 1967 and the Offences against the Person Act 1861. The rule of law is also thus under attack.
A leaflet issued by the FPA, entitled "emergency contraception for when you know you have been at risk" (sic), declares:-
"Medical Research and legal opinion are quite clear that emergency contraception prevents pregnancy and is not an abortion." (Their emphasis.)
Possibly the "legal opinion" referred to is the absurd Written Parliamentary Answer given on 10th May 1983 by the then Attorney-General, criticised so often by us and most recently in our Summer 1994 Newsletter. As we made clear in that Newsletter, those words of the Attorney-General do not have the force of legal authority and contain a legal opinion with which our Association heartily disagrees. What the "Medical Research" may be we can only guess, but once again we refer our readers to the medical dictionary definitions below.
Here, then, are the definitions now being challenged for financial and political purposes :-
The Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary (1980 O.U.P.) CONCEPTION: "The start of pregnancy, when a male germ cell, (sperm), fertilizes a female cell, (ovum), in the Fallopian Tube."
Blakiston's 'Gould' Medical Dictionary (4th edition 1979)
CONCEPTION: "The fertilisation of the ovum by the spermatozoon."
Butterworth 's Medical Dictionary (2nd edition reprinted 1980)
CONCEPTION: "The fertilization of the ovum by a spermatozoon."
Black's Medical Dictionary (32nd edition 1979)
"The precise moment of conception is that at which the male element, or spermatozoon, and the female element, or ovum, fuse together."
Medical Terminology in Hospital Practice (3rd edition 1978)
"The processes of reproduction commence when following coitus, (sexual intercourse), an ovum is fertilized by a spermatozoon, a process described as conception."
Medical and Nursing Dictionary and Encyclopaedia
(14th edition 1975)
"When the ovum and the male reproductive element - the spermatozoon - unite, the woman has conceived."
Bailliere's Nurses' Dictionary (19th edition 1979)
CONCEPTION: "The act of becoming pregnant by the fertilization of an ovum."
Churchill Livingston's Nurse's Dictionary (15th edition 1978)
CONCEPTION: "The act of becoming pregnant by the impregnation of the ovum by the spermatozoon."
Black's Medical Dictionary
CONTRACEPTION: "The prevention by artificial means of the fertilization of the ovum ensuing from sexual intercourse."
The Lane Committee, (para. 266), defines contraception as "... the prevention by artificial means of the
fertilization of the ovum."
How Your Life Began by Roger Pilkington, M.A., Ph.D.
"Life begins at conception." (page 11).
"There are three distinct phases in the process of conception: Ovulation...... Impregnation...... Fertilisation......" (page 4).
Today, of course, the industry has fully established its right to describe black as white and women are routinely told that although the pills may prevent a fertilised egg from implanting in their womb, this is not an abortion. More recent dictionaries provide the necessary definition of conception as being a process which includes implantation.
In 2001 the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children took Judicial Review proceedings (Regina (John Smeaton on behalf of Society for the Protection of Unborn Children [SPUC]) v. Secretary of State for Health ex parte Schering, (2003)) against government regulations which would have allowed sale of the morning after pill without a prescription. The level of evidence which swayed the learned judge to decide that the pill does not cause an abortion but has only a contraceptive effect may be judged from the words, approvingly quoted by the judge, of Professor James Drife BSc(Hons), MB ChB, MD, FROCG, FRCPEd, FRCSEd, who told the court in written evidence:
“Nowadays, pregnancy is confirmed by a positive pregnancy test, which can be carried out on either urine or blood. It tests for HCG (human chorionic gonadotrophin), a hormone produced by the placenta or the cells destined to form the placenta........... In my view pregnancy begins when the pregnancy test is positive, some ten to fourteen days after conception.”
This may be a bit of a surprise to the billions of women in various parts of the world for whom a pregnancy test is an unknown luxury. Are they never pregnant?
