The Colorado Family Planning Initiative, an organization that helps lower the cost of contraception, is facing difficulty from state Republicans who argue that intrauterine devices are a form of abortion. The state of Colorado does not have the jurisdiction to fund abortions.
IUDs like the Mirena and Skyla mainly work by causing the mucus in the female cervix to thicken so sperm cannot pass through it. Furthermore the Progestin hormone keeps the lining of the uterus thin, Deborah Meyers, CNP, MS (Nurse Practitioner) and owner of Sage Healthcare, said.
A fertilized egg, which is very rare, has nothing to implant or connect to in the uterus. The Paragard copper IUD is to kill the sperm and also affect implantation. Only one in 100 women in a given year will get pregnant with an IUD in place or a 99% effectiveness rate, she said.
“I have put in a lot of IUDs and if I have a patient with religious concerns, I have explained there's a small possibility of fertilization of an egg. There lies the rub,” she said.
If people feel pregnancy is defined as ‘at the time of fertilization’, rather than ‘at the time of implantation’, as most of the medical community defines pregnancy, it's understandable why they may think the IUD is an abortive.
“Is that the intentional termination of a pregnancy? At any rate, I certainly do not feel this is justification for this argument,” Meyers said.
The main purpose of an IUD is to prevent pregnancy. However, there is the possibility of a fertilized egg that is prevented from implantation, thus ending pregnancy, she said.
“I think it is a health care provider's responsibility to explain how the IUD works, and the woman's responsibility to make their own choice if they don't want to risk that potential, unintentional end of a pregnancy,” Meyers said.
“I, of course, feel it's the woman's decision to choose what to do with her own body and it's the health provider's job to educate--not a legislator's power to control either the women or the provider,” Meyers said.
Not only do IUD’s kill newly conceived zygote, they endanger women and their bodies. Once an IUD is implanted, the woman is in danger of a number of dangerous and harmful side effects, said Emily Sandner, president of Life-Line, an organization at Fort Lewis College.
Life-Line is open to anyone, she said. Members do not need to belong to or believe in any specific religion, and are foremost a pro-life club.
If you take the position that life begins at fertilization, the next step is to make the argument that contraceptives like IUDs are in fact a form of abortion, said Richard Foster, professor of political science at FLC.
“For people that are reflexively opposed to most types of birth control, it is a strong argument and it mobilizes the base and gets people writing letters to the senators and to other congresspeople to do something about it,” he said.
The reasonable counter argument to the original is that contraceptives, funded by the government or any other way, help prevent unwanted pregnancies which tend to end up in abortion, Foster said.