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This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Lawyers have the saying, “Bad facts make for bad cases; bad cases make for bad laws.” What we’re seeing, I fear, all too often in discussions about reproductive rights, reproductive behavior, and attempts to regulate and legislate with respect to abortion and contraception are many bad facts.
I do think it’s important that science and medicine speak up in local settings and every opportunity they have, not so much to say what government should do or to say whether they think a particular law is good or bad, but certainly to get the facts straight in their role as doctors, sometimes as scientists, and as caregivers.
Bad facts are making many bad policies in the reproductive behavior space. For example, there are many people, mainly on the conservative side, who are saying things like intrauterine devices, emergency contraception, and even birth control cause abortions. That is simply not true.
There are interventions that prevent fertilization from occurring. There are also interventions that prevent implantation from occurring. Neither of those are abortions. If an embryo has not implanted into a womb, it is not, by any biological definition, a pregnancy.
In situations where a barrier method or something else prevents sperm and egg from meeting or if there is an agent that prevents an egg from implanting, these are facts that legislators, the public, and even your patients need to understand if they’re going to make sound policy about access to methods used to control reproduction.
Similarly, you can see debates about whether embryos are deserving of rights. An Alabama court has ruled that embryos are tiny children. A court can say what it wishes in terms of legal status, but it shouldn’t be deviating from the facts.
The facts are clear. Embryos outside of a uterus implanted are not babies. They are not children. At most, an embryo in a dish might be considered, let’s say, a possible person. Once it implants in a uterus, it may become a potential person because it then still has a failure rate, postimplantation, of not becoming a baby that’s very high. Approximately 40%-50% of such embryos are genetically flawed and aren’t going to be able to turn into a child.
The notion that every embryo, whether it’s stored in a tank or sitting in a dish, is somehow a tiny child, factually is just not true. You can’t make good policy if you ignore the facts. People may wish to protect embryos. They may wish to restrict in vitro fertilization. They may wish to have people implant any embryo that is created and mandate that it has to happen because they don’t want any tiny children not to be brought to term.
Factually, they’re operating outside the realm of what biology and medicine know. There’s no tiny baby, no homunculus, or no preformed baby inside an embryo. An egg that simply fails to implant is not technically even a pregnancy.
I think all of us have an obligation when we’re in disputes, wherever they occur, whether we’re fighting about laws, having an argument with the neighbors, or speaking to younger high school students or even patients, we need to try to make clear the facts about what we know about eggs, how birth control works, and embryos and their failure rate.
We also have to be clear about the significance of saying the facts have to guide public policy. I think the facts should, but unfortunately, I don’t think that’s always been true in recent years. As efforts heat up to intervene more with things like contraception, getting the facts straight becomes even more important and more of a duty for those who know best.
Dr. Caplan is director, Division of Medical Ethics, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York. He served as a director, officer, partner, employee, adviser, consultant, or trustee for Johnson & Johnson’s Panel for Compassionate Drug Use (unpaid position). He is a contributing author and adviser for Medscape.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Lawyers have the saying, “Bad facts make for bad cases; bad cases make for bad laws.” What we’re seeing, I fear, all too often in discussions about reproductive rights, reproductive behavior, and attempts to regulate and legislate with respect to abortion and contraception are many bad facts.
I do think it’s important that science and medicine speak up in local settings and every opportunity they have, not so much to say what government should do or to say whether they think a particular law is good or bad, but certainly to get the facts straight in their role as doctors, sometimes as scientists, and as caregivers.
Bad facts are making many bad policies in the reproductive behavior space. For example, there are many people, mainly on the conservative side, who are saying things like intrauterine devices, emergency contraception, and even birth control cause abortions. That is simply not true.
There are interventions that prevent fertilization from occurring. There are also interventions that prevent implantation from occurring. Neither of those are abortions. If an embryo has not implanted into a womb, it is not, by any biological definition, a pregnancy.
In situations where a barrier method or something else prevents sperm and egg from meeting or if there is an agent that prevents an egg from implanting, these are facts that legislators, the public, and even your patients need to understand if they’re going to make sound policy about access to methods used to control reproduction.
Similarly, you can see debates about whether embryos are deserving of rights. An Alabama court has ruled that embryos are tiny children. A court can say what it wishes in terms of legal status, but it shouldn’t be deviating from the facts.
The facts are clear. Embryos outside of a uterus implanted are not babies. They are not children. At most, an embryo in a dish might be considered, let’s say, a possible person. Once it implants in a uterus, it may become a potential person because it then still has a failure rate, postimplantation, of not becoming a baby that’s very high. Approximately 40%-50% of such embryos are genetically flawed and aren’t going to be able to turn into a child.
The notion that every embryo, whether it’s stored in a tank or sitting in a dish, is somehow a tiny child, factually is just not true. You can’t make good policy if you ignore the facts. People may wish to protect embryos. They may wish to restrict in vitro fertilization. They may wish to have people implant any embryo that is created and mandate that it has to happen because they don’t want any tiny children not to be brought to term.
Factually, they’re operating outside the realm of what biology and medicine know. There’s no tiny baby, no homunculus, or no preformed baby inside an embryo. An egg that simply fails to implant is not technically even a pregnancy.
I think all of us have an obligation when we’re in disputes, wherever they occur, whether we’re fighting about laws, having an argument with the neighbors, or speaking to younger high school students or even patients, we need to try to make clear the facts about what we know about eggs, how birth control works, and embryos and their failure rate.
We also have to be clear about the significance of saying the facts have to guide public policy. I think the facts should, but unfortunately, I don’t think that’s always been true in recent years. As efforts heat up to intervene more with things like contraception, getting the facts straight becomes even more important and more of a duty for those who know best.
Dr. Caplan is director, Division of Medical Ethics, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York. He served as a director, officer, partner, employee, adviser, consultant, or trustee for Johnson & Johnson’s Panel for Compassionate Drug Use (unpaid position). He is a contributing author and adviser for Medscape.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Lawyers have the saying, “Bad facts make for bad cases; bad cases make for bad laws.” What we’re seeing, I fear, all too often in discussions about reproductive rights, reproductive behavior, and attempts to regulate and legislate with respect to abortion and contraception are many bad facts.
I do think it’s important that science and medicine speak up in local settings and every opportunity they have, not so much to say what government should do or to say whether they think a particular law is good or bad, but certainly to get the facts straight in their role as doctors, sometimes as scientists, and as caregivers.
Bad facts are making many bad policies in the reproductive behavior space. For example, there are many people, mainly on the conservative side, who are saying things like intrauterine devices, emergency contraception, and even birth control cause abortions. That is simply not true.
There are interventions that prevent fertilization from occurring. There are also interventions that prevent implantation from occurring. Neither of those are abortions. If an embryo has not implanted into a womb, it is not, by any biological definition, a pregnancy.
In situations where a barrier method or something else prevents sperm and egg from meeting or if there is an agent that prevents an egg from implanting, these are facts that legislators, the public, and even your patients need to understand if they’re going to make sound policy about access to methods used to control reproduction.
Similarly, you can see debates about whether embryos are deserving of rights. An Alabama court has ruled that embryos are tiny children. A court can say what it wishes in terms of legal status, but it shouldn’t be deviating from the facts.
The facts are clear. Embryos outside of a uterus implanted are not babies. They are not children. At most, an embryo in a dish might be considered, let’s say, a possible person. Once it implants in a uterus, it may become a potential person because it then still has a failure rate, postimplantation, of not becoming a baby that’s very high. Approximately 40%-50% of such embryos are genetically flawed and aren’t going to be able to turn into a child.
The notion that every embryo, whether it’s stored in a tank or sitting in a dish, is somehow a tiny child, factually is just not true. You can’t make good policy if you ignore the facts. People may wish to protect embryos. They may wish to restrict in vitro fertilization. They may wish to have people implant any embryo that is created and mandate that it has to happen because they don’t want any tiny children not to be brought to term.
Factually, they’re operating outside the realm of what biology and medicine know. There’s no tiny baby, no homunculus, or no preformed baby inside an embryo. An egg that simply fails to implant is not technically even a pregnancy.
I think all of us have an obligation when we’re in disputes, wherever they occur, whether we’re fighting about laws, having an argument with the neighbors, or speaking to younger high school students or even patients, we need to try to make clear the facts about what we know about eggs, how birth control works, and embryos and their failure rate.
We also have to be clear about the significance of saying the facts have to guide public policy. I think the facts should, but unfortunately, I don’t think that’s always been true in recent years. As efforts heat up to intervene more with things like contraception, getting the facts straight becomes even more important and more of a duty for those who know best.
Dr. Caplan is director, Division of Medical Ethics, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York. He served as a director, officer, partner, employee, adviser, consultant, or trustee for Johnson & Johnson’s Panel for Compassionate Drug Use (unpaid position). He is a contributing author and adviser for Medscape.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.