Illogical arguments (even when well-intentioned) do not belong in The New York Times

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emergency contraceptive, fertilization, implantation, junk science, morning-after pill, New York Times, Plan B

While consistently supporting women’s right to legal abortion, The New York Times writers on occasion seem unable to refrain from pushing illogical arguments that do not help the cause. I posted about this on two previous occasions in 2013 and in 2014. On September 7, 2018 the newspaper published an article by Pam Belluck with the title “Science Does Not Support Claims That Contraceptives Are ‘Abortion-Inducing'”. The article rightly points out that anti-abortion zealots run counter to established medical opinion when they claim that pregnancy begins with fertilization rather than implantation of the fertilized ovum in the uterine wall.

But then Belluck states that “a growing body of research strongly indicates” that emergency contraceptive pills don’t prevent implantation. “Instead, the pills, if taken up to five days after unprotected sex, work to stop fertilization from occurring. They do this by delaying ovulation… or by thickening cervical mucus so that sperm have trouble swimming and reaching the egg to fertilize it.”

A moment’s thought shows that this claim makes no sense. As Belluck says, the Plan B pills work for up to five days after intercourse. But ovulation in a large proportion of cases must have occurred before the pills were taken. If the pills worked only by preventing ovulation, then they would fail to prevent pregnancy in all those cases, and that is false.

When people say that some of the Plan B pills are effective up to 120 hours after unprotected sex, what they mean is that, among all women who would have otherwise become pregnant, most will not become pregnant if they take the pills within five days. As any fertility expert will tell you, in order to get pregnant you need to ovulate as soon as possible after intercourse. After 48 hours sperm rapidly lose motility, and the chances of sperm fertilizing an egg after waiting 120 hours for ovulation are near zero. Thus, among the women who take emergency contraception after four or five days and who otherwise would have become pregnant, almost all have already ovulated.

The fact that the pill is effective up to five days after sex obviously and incontrovertibly means that the later in the five-day window one has waited, the more likely it is that the drug is working post-fertilization. Clearly, if egg and sperm have already met, the pill is either directly destroying the fertilized ovum or preventing its implantation in the uterine wall. It defies logic to deny something so obvious, as The New York Times has done before (see my previous post “Well-Intentioned Junk Science Is Still Junk Science”).

Supporters of reproductive rights should not attempt to appeal to anti-abortion zealots with erroneous claims that the effective action of post-coital contraceptives is exclusively pre-fertilization. We need to freely acknowledge that the processes involved in establishing a pregnancy are complex, and the ways in which contraceptives impede these processes are also complex. We cannot disguise the fact that several common contraceptives, including morning-after pills, IUDs, and ordinary birth control pills, sometimes act after conception. Thus, all these methods are potential targets for those who claim that any destruction of a fertilized ovum is murder. Ironically, to be consistent, anti-abortion extremists should also oppose the rhythm method — the only form of birth control permitted by the Catholic church — as I point out in “Questions to Ask Your Priest”.

To support their extreme stance, the anti-abortion movement routinely makes fanciful, unscientific claims — that first-trimester embryos feel pain, that legal abortions are less safe than childbirth, and that most women are traumatized by abortion. We should counter their falsehoods by always giving accurate information. If we indulge in junk science, we are descending to their level.

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Well-Intentioned Junk Science is Still Junk Science

Tags

emergency contraceptive, fertilization, implantation, junk science, morning-after pill, Plan B

A few weeks ago I read an article in the New York Times titled “New Birth Control Label Counters Lawsuit Claims” (11/26/13).  The article reported that the Food and Drug Administration is studying whether to follow their counterparts in Europe and remove the requirement that manufacturers of emergency contraception (the Plan B “morning-after” pills) state on the label that the pills are believed to act by preventing implantation of the fertilized egg in the uterine wall.

The article noted that there has been opposition on religious grounds to insurance coverage of morning-after contraception because of the belief that it causes abortion.   These opponents of Plan B argue that a human being exists from the moment of fertilization, and so the destruction of a fertilized egg (in this case by blocking implantation) is tantamount to killing a human being.

Referring to an earlier article titled “Abortion Qualms on Morning-After Pill May Be Unfounded” (6/5/12), the Times cites evidence that purports to show that the pills actually act before fertilization to prevent ovulation or fertilization.  The newspaper quotes some medical specialists to the effect that the latest science has revealed that Plan B does not destroy fertilized eggs, and so the label requirement needs to be removed, at the same time removing any justification for anti-abortion lobbyists to classify the morning-after pills as abortifacients.  According to the June 2012 article, “It turns out that the politically charged debate about morning-after pills and abortion, a divisive issue in this election year, is probably rooted in outdated or incorrect scientific guesses about how the pills work.”

However, a careful reading of the two articles (and other sources that deal with the physiology of sex and pregnancy) makes it clear that the morning-after pill could not possibly be as effective as it is unless it blocks implantation of a fertilized egg.  For example, according to the Times, “scientists say the pills work up to five days after sex, primarily stalling an egg’s release until sperm can no longer fertilize it.”  This makes no sense, since sperm is viable on the average for only about two days after sex; if the egg has not been released as of five days after sex, then it is extremely unlikely that pregnancy could occur.  (This is the basis for calling the first seven days of a woman’s cycle a “pre-ovulatory safe period” for sex without pregnancy.)  In other words, if the morning-after pill taken five days after sex actually prevents a pregnancy, then in almost all cases it does so after fertilization, not before.

The June 2012 article goes on to say: “In one study using fertilized eggs that would have been discarded from fertility clinics, Dr. Gemzell-Danielsson found that adding Plan B in a dish did not prevent them from attaching to cells that line the uterus.”  But no one can seriously believe that cells in a petri dish can possibly replicate the complex physiological processes in human reproduction.  The interaction of morning-after pills with the chemistry of the womb is complex and occurs over a period of time, which is why taking the pills on the eve of implantation (which usually occurs a week-and-a-half or two weeks after sex) will not prevent pregnancy.  So the experiment proves nothing.

Clearly, the New York Times and the authorities cited have good intentions.  They support women’s right to have access to a full range of reproductive health options, and they wish to head off opposition to Plan B by anti-abortion zealots.  However, distorting the science is not the way to do this.  Rather, we should directly confront the notion that abortion is murder and that a sperm and egg become a human being at the moment of fertilization.   We should acknowledge that someone who accepts the extremist notion that prevention of implantation of a fertilized egg is murder is morally obliged to oppose not only Plan B, but also the use of contraceptive pills and IUDs as well.  Probably they should oppose the rhythm method, too (see my article
“Questions To Ask Your Priest”).

In reality, pregnancy is a process, not an absolute, and the dividing line between contraception and abortion is a slippery one.   No amount of junk science, however well-intentioned, can obscure this fact.