A careful reading of the above shows that it is misleading to say that the Bush administration is equating contraception and abortion. It is equating SOME practices commonly called "contraception" with abortion.

The administration is not, for example, equating condom use with abortion. Nor is it equating vasectomy or tubal ligation or the rhythm method or coitus interuptus or celibacy or "combination" oral contraceptives with abortion. The practices in question are "morning after" pills, progestin-only pills, Depo-Provera, and IUDs.

These practices can sometimes actually prevent conception but they also sometimes allow conception while preventing implantation. Preventing implantation results in the death of the conceptus. Therefore, calling these practices "contraception" is misleading.

I have had more than one fervently pro-life patient learn, to her horror, that what her gynecologist prescribed for her as "contraception" would be more accurately called "contra-implantation". Although these practices are not usually called abortions, they do exactly what anti-abortion advocates object to: they kill the conceptus. Regardless of one's views on abortion, surely we can agree that marketing an anti-implantation technology as if it worked solely by preventing conception is, at best, consumer fraud.

Kent