Science Does Not Support Claims That Contraceptives Are
‘Abortion-Inducing’
During his
Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Thursday, Judge Brett Kavanaugh
referred to some forms of birth control as “abortion-inducing drugs.”
The phrase is a characterization that some anti-abortion religious
groups use, but it is not supported by scientific evidence.
Judge
Kavanaugh used the phrase while answering questions by Senator Ted
Cruz, Republican of Texas, about a 2015 dissent he wrote in a case
brought by a Catholic organization over a requirement in the federal
health care law that employers include contraception coverage in
employee health plans. The group, Priests for Life, argued that the
provision violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, despite an
exception allowing employers with religious objections to arrange for a
separate insurance company to provide contraceptive coverage.
“They
said filling out the form would make them complicit in the provision of
the abortion-inducing drugs that they were, as a religious matter,
objecting to,” Judge Kavanaugh testified, describing the group’s
position.
It was not clear exactly which methods Judge Kavanaugh was referring to when he used the phrase “abortion-inducing drugs.”
Most common types of contraception —
birth control pills, condoms, hormonal intrauterine devices and implants
— prevent conception by keeping eggs from becoming fertilized.
The
description “abortion-inducing” is most often used by anti-abortion
religious groups to characterize methods they believe can prevent a
fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. These groups typically say
that such methods are morning-after pills and copper intrauterine
devices.
There are two main reasons this belief
does not comport with scientific evidence. First, the medical definition
of pregnancy is that it begins after a fertilized egg is implanted in
the uterus, not before. That is because many, probably most, fertilized
eggs naturally fail to implant in the uterus on their own.
Second,
a growing body of research strongly indicates that morning-after pills,
such as Plan B and Ella, do not 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, the
release of eggs from the ovaries that occurs before eggs are fertilized,
or by thickening cervical mucus so that sperm have trouble swimming and
reaching the egg to fertilize it.
A New York Times investigation of the science behind morning-after pills
in 2012 prompted the National Institutes of Health website to delete
passages suggesting emergency contraceptive pills could disrupt
implantation. A spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration said at
the time that “emerging data” suggested that morning-after pills do not
inhibit implantation.
The
other method of emergency contraception, the copper IUD, does appear to
be able to block implantation of a fertilized egg, scientists say. (It
is different from the more popular hormonal IUDs, such as the common
brand Mirena, which are extremely effective at preventing fertilization
in the first place and have no effect on implantation.)
The
copper IUD is also highly effective at preventing fertilization and,
unlike hormonal IUDs, can do so even if inserted within five days after
unprotected sex. In the small number of cases where the copper IUD does
not prevent fertilization, scientists say it might be able to disrupt
the process by which the fertilized egg would implant in the uterus.
Because
it has to be inserted by a health provider within a few days after
unprotected sex, however, the copper IUD is a much less common method of
emergency contraception than morning-after pills.
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A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Questioning Birth Control, Inaccurately. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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