Feds Propose Egg As Person Lite Regulation

The Federal Department of Human Services is has drafted a rule that would define abortion much more broadly than it does now, in a way that would treat oral contraceptive and IUD use as abortion.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has drafted a rule that would call it abortion when a contraceptive prevents a fertilized egg from embedding itself in the uterine wall.

That's one of the ways many birth-control pills and intrauterine devices work.

This is less surprising when you consider the kind of people President Bush has appointed to pertinent policy positions in his administration:

Contraception as most women practice it is part of the ``culture of death,'' declared Susan Orr, whom President George W. Bush put in charge of the Office of Population Affairs.

The rule is part of a larger one to give pharmacists a federal right to impose their own moral judgments on pharmacy customers who don't share their views.