In a college sex-education class, the professor showed a film about the fertilization of an egg. The film showed a magnified view of a sperm swimming, its tail whipping behind it. The film also showed an egg. Then the sperm again. Then the egg again. The sperm. The egg. Suddenly, a woman cried out from the back: "Run, egg, run!"
But it turns out that the egg could have stayed safe by walking.
1. Fertilization and birth-control pills after sex.
It turns out that pregnancy, if it happens, typically doesn’t happen right away after sex. The tiny sperm has a long trek through a fallopian tube to find its bliss in an egg.
I didn't know this fact until recently. And it might not be widely known to the public. (I’m just guessing; in my sixth-grade class, the boys played outside while the girls watched a movie.) This maybe-widespread ignorance makes it easy to believe that two after-intercourse birth-control pills actually induce abortions.
The best known of these pills is called Plan B. Plan B and its generic versions are also known as "the morning-after pill". That’s a misnomer. They actually works up to 72 hours after sex.
There is also Ella. Ella works up to five days after sex. It’s known by some as "the week-after pill". Because it’s effective only up to five days after sex, maybe it should be called "the work-week-after pill".
2. Plan B, Ella, and abortion.
The federal Food and Drug Administration states that both Plan B and Ella work by keeping an egg from being released from the ovaries. So like other contraceptives, these pills stop the fertilization of an egg.
But the the FDA also states that Ella (but not Plan B) can stop a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus wall. If that were to happen, the egg would simply exit the woman’s body. Abortion foes typically claim that a fertilized egg is a human being and should be protected. So destruction of a fertilized egg would make Ella, to abortion foes, a means of inducing abortion.
3. Plan B, Ella, and the journalists’ integrity.
But it’s not clear what that conclusion about Ella and implantation is based on. According to the New York Times, officials responsible for the decision to claim that Ella stops implantation, or who are knowledgeable about that decision, refuse to be interviewed.
And according to the New York Times’s June, 2012 article:
It turns out that the politically charged debate over morning-after pills and abortion, a divisive issue in this election year, is probably rooted in outdated or incorrect scientific guesses about how the pills work. Because they block creation of fertilized eggs, they would not meet abortion opponents’ definition of abortion-inducing drugs.According to the New York Times, the National Institutes of Health has revised its web description of how Ella works to reflect the best scientific knowledge. It no longer claims that Ella stops an egg’s implantation in the uterus.
Presently, the Mayo Clinic’s website says:
[R]ecent evidence strongly suggests that Plan B One-Step and Next Choice [the generic version] do not inhibit implantation. It's not clear if the same is true for Ella.But The New York Times interviewed the Mayo Clinic’s physician in charge of its website. He says that the hospital is "chomping at the bit" to revise its website to conform with the best scientific studies; it only waits for confirmation from government authorities like the FDA.
The conservative Weekly Standard goes the other way. It touts the supposedly un-deniable truth that Ella causes abortions. It does so in a web piece titled "Obamacare Mandates (Free) Coverage of Abortion Drug".
The Weekly Standard sourcing is weak. Sources for their conclusion include partisans like The Family Research Council; or a Dr. Justo Aznar, an ethics professor at a Catholic university in Spain. It also cites the generic web source WebMD that parrots the FDA.
The Weekly Standard insinuates much from reliable sources like CBS, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. These sources, according to The Weekly Standard, say that Ella is chemically similar to RU-486, which does induce abortions. RU-486 and Ella have the same chemical agent, but RU-486 is twenty times more potent. That’s the difference between sprinkling salt on your steak and pouring salt into your mouth. Dose is everything. The Weekly Standard puts too much weight on too little information.
4. Abortion and Obamacare.
The Hobby Lobby is a major retailer. They say that they will defy the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to supply their employees free with contraceptives like Plan B and Ella. They explain that they believe that these pills produce abortions, and that abortion is an offense to God.
They stand on solid ground as to how Ella operates as long as the FDA continues to agree with them, in apparent defiance of the best scientific research.Their ground for objecting to Plan B is more shrouded. But if they choose they could take cover under The Weekly Standard.
5. Love and consequences.
A lot rides on Hobby Lobby’s decision to defy the law. Defiance comes with a penalty to them of $1.3 million a day.
Hobby Lobby lost its lawsuit in federal district court to liberate themselves from having to pay for Plan B and Ella for their employees. They have appealed. In the meantime, they face the fines. The fines start on New Years Day, 2013.
They went to the court of appeal to suspend the fines pending appeal. The court of appeal turned them down. They carried their plea for relief pending appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court also turned them down. Nothing now stands between them and the penalty for defiance of the law.
Maybe this is an acceptable price for their clean consciences.
I don’t understand these people.
That’s not a dismissive remark. I mean it sincerely. Maybe their love for the unborn is so deep that the money doesn’t matter.
But even if their assumption about how Ella and Plan B work is right, their love is a love of life in the form of maybe six-hundred un-differentiated cells. This life that they protect at great cost to their wealth has no fingers, no toes, no eyes, nor even discrete organs. To me, life in a form that so little resembles a human or any other visible creature, and which has no feelings or thoughts, is not lovable.
Alternatively, maybe they are not moved by love toward any undifferentiated group of cells, but by a tenderness toward God and a Godly desire for God’s will on earth. Maybe this love moves them to part with nearly half-a-billion dollars a year.
If they have such love, I need to learn at their feet. And if they cannot trace by words their spiritual minds upon mine, maybe they would pray for me to know the tenderness and fullness that they know. God would answer that prayer of such righteous men and women, and I would be lifted up by their prayers. I wish that were so because I crave prayers and would like to be lifted up.
I do not judge them because I do not know them. But I would be naive if I were to automatically reject the possibility that they did not act with love but with a religious legalism, a probity by which they judge others. And I would be naive if I were to automatically reject the possibility that their Christianity is infused with a hard-right sensibility that conflates the love of God with hatred of anything Democratic. I have seen such Christianity.
Or maybe they're like me. Maybe they make moral decisions with some mixture of love or fear of God, love of others, legalism, and ideology.
6. Science and relief from $1.3 million a day.
Hobby Lobby's difficulty is not only a religious difficulty. It is also a scientific difficulty.
Hobby Lobby says that it has no moral difficulty paying for ordinary contraceptives. It quarrels with Plan B and Ella because they believe that these harm fertilized eggs.
But as we have seen, the weight of science is against that position. Hobby Lobby could accept the clear consensus of science and the findings of the FDA as to Plan B. They could accept the emerging consensus of the latest findings of the scientific community as to Ella. If they did those things, Hobby Lobby could come to agreement with their accuser. They would not have to choose between their consciences and painful fines.
7. Climate change, crime statistics, and the casual disregard of science.
But good science is routinely rejected in America.
For example, there is a broad scientific consensus that human activity causes global warming. How broad this consensus is is stated by the National Science Foundation. They’re the body of scientists that turned forensic DNA testing from a crap-shoot that could convict the innocent into something highly reliable. They did that by examining the science of DNA testing and perfecting it.
Here’s what the National Science Foundation says about man-made global warming:
(i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [finding that humans contribute to global warming], and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers. ["Expert Credibility in Climate Change" (abstract) (2010).]Yet the two-to-three percent of deniers, who have substantially less expertise, command broad attention among the American public and right-wing politicians and the fossil-fuel industry.
And, of course, the techno-thriller writer Michael Crichton wrote a novel that purported to demolish the idea of man-made global warming (State of Fear). His undergraduate concentration was anthropology, although he later got a medical degree (1969). If, as an M.D., he had written a book about home-surgery, it probably would have done less harm than his novel about climate change.
But for many, a techno-thriller writer matters more than the National Science Foundation.
Selective hostility toward science taints public judgment of other scientific conclusions. Economists Donohue and Levitt wrote a paper that studied the effect of legalizing abortion on crime. They concluded that legalized abortion leads to less crime, including violent crime, as the generations subject to legal abortions come of age.
This conclusion was attacked. I cannot say that it was attacked by fringe science; but Donohue and Levitt’s principal opponent on this issue seems to have abandoned statistics and embraced moral arguments. Steven Levitt’s article that summarizes his argument and answers his critics is linked below.
There is a lengthy reply to Levitt’s piece that purports to be by Levitt’s committed opponent, Steve Sailer. He waives at statistics and presses into the tall grass of child "wantedness" and other un-measurable concepts. He’s bold to argue based upon what is "pretty likely" and what is his "guess". He speaks knowingly about what "the educated assume". He describes facts as "pretty murky" and then makes assumptions about those facts.
Of course, as a reason for or against legalized abortion, statistics do not end the discussion. A moral argument can justly outweigh an argument based on utility. Sailer calls abortion a "pre-emptive death penalty". Someone might or might not agree with him, but the argument is fairly made.
Fair point or not, we shouldn’t despise science because we hate its findings.
8. The politics of science.
A definition of politics is "The often internally conflicting interrelationships among people in a society." (American Heritage Dictionary of English Language (fourth edition).) There is a politics of science. We war with each other in the media, in courtrooms, in classrooms, and in legislatures over science and its usefulness in particular cases. We choose direction for ourselves and our society based on the outcome of these wars.
9. Bearing the burden of the politics of science.
Sometimes, disregard of science has no personal consequence.
A person might or might not believe in evolution. But not believing in it usually has no consequences. I remember, from my youth, an argument with a high school science teacher about evolution. He didn’t believe in it. Still he taught science.
Sometimes disregard of science has grave personal consequences.
In my youth, I sat in on the trial of a couple, the Parkers, who did not get treatment for their son Wesley’s diabetes. They did not believe in medicine. Wesley died, and the jury convicted the Parkers of manslaughter.
Sometimes disregard of science has grave collective consequences.
Man-made global warming is affecting America. Any given storm or drought cannot be reliably blamed on global warming. But the mechanisms of global warming and droughts and storms are well understood by climate scientists. And if the public largely rejects the science behind man-made global warming, still we live with the consequences of the steady rise in temperature since the industrial revolution. These consequences exist, for example, in the form of crop-destroying droughts and deadly storms.
Sometimes disregard of science starts out as a burden on others and becomes a burden on ones self.
10. Hobby Lobby and the politics of science.
The last case is the case with Hobby Lobby. While they initially clung to an outdated understanding about the workings of Plan B and Ella, the consequence fell, potentially, only on their employees. An employee might have used poor judgement during sex, or used good judgement and suffered an accidental failure of a condom, or exercised no judgment because she was raped. Hobby Lobby has made it more difficult for them to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.
But the burden of knowing the science of these contraceptives has now shifted onto Hobby Lobby. That, of course, is where it belongs. Facing huge fines, Hobby Lobby probably should use its vast resources to get the best possible advice about how these contraceptives work. It would pay them to believe that advice.
11. Science and faith.
If I had to choose between living in a society where God was known and science was not, or a society where science was known and God was not, I know which I would choose. Others would make a different choice.
But it’s a false dilemma. I believe that ignorance of God is a hazard to anyone in any place at any time. To anyone in our nation in our time, I believe that ignorance of science can have consequences. But science and faith don't exclude each other. Most Americans believe in God, and they accept much science. They readily use techology, which is based on science.
12. Conscience and Country.
A time comes when conscience must oppose law. And a time comes when conscience must yield to the national will expressed in law. I once prosecuted a man for driving without a license. He considered it an affront to accept a driver's license. He thought driving was a natural right, beyond government dispensation.
I would have a problem if the law compelled an employer to pay for abortion. There is no wide agreement in society as to that. But relatively few people cling to the belief that contraception is evil.
I hope Hobby Lobby keeps their piety and learns science.
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The New York Times on morning-after and week-after pills:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/health/research/morning-after-pills-dont-block-implantation-science-suggests.html?pagewanted=all
The Weekly Standard on morning-after and week-after pills:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-mandates-coverage-abortion-drug_581969.html
Steven D. Levitt on legalized abortion and crime rates:
http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/
National Science Foundation on man-made global warming (summary of findings):
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract?sid=c4aba312-61f9-4189-a37d-6062a033a93b
