Standing up for human rights

Regarding the letter, “Taking away workers’ rights” by Katherine Wax: I would offer this bit of fact. Although she asserts that it is ridiculous to think emergency contraception causes abortion, I respectfully say she is wrong in her understanding of the early days of the embryo.

When I earned my RN license years ago, I brought with me a baccalaureate degree rich in studies of methods of contraception, abortion, gestation and ethics. Let me say that the process from egg and sperm to become baby is extremely complicated and depends on an array of factors that would make your head spin. What is discarded after emergency contraception is not just an egg and womb lining. What is travelling down the fallopian tube after conception contains all the hereditary DNA of both parents and the generations before them. It is no longer just a single-cell egg, but a living, busily growing, complex being. Emergency contraception alters the normal environment of the womb so that this new being cannot survive there.

Let the Supreme Court be guided by complete scientific knowledge in this complicated issue that affects the personal conscience of our very diverse citizenry.

Ruth Pilling

Snohomish

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