The New Anti-Life Counter-Attack

June 16, 2006 Volume 8 / Number 23

Dear Colleague:

Opponents of life have found a new weapon to undermine pro-life credibility.

Steven W. Mosher President

The New Anti-Life Counter-Attack

Perhaps due to deepening desperation as pro-life attitudes continue to gain traction in America and other English-speaking countries, the New York Times has seized upon a novel weapon in this culture war.  The old Grey Lady and the many pundits, politicians, bloggers, and ordinary Americans who take their lead from it have a brand-new stick with which to beat their least favorite people, faithful Catholics.  To be fair, some of them might dislike radical Muslims even more, but I cannot prove this.

The unfortunately influential NYT took up the argument of Luc Bovens, a philosopher at the well-respected London School of Economics (LSE). Bovens argues in the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME) that couples who use the ‘rhythm method’ may cause the deaths of more embryos than those who use condoms as a method of birth control.  Since pro-life people consider life to begin at conception, such a charge is highly valuable in undermining their morale, credibility, and the case against artificial contraception.  Of course, the rhythm method went out decades ago, but Bovens claims his argument can apply to any couple that attempts to avoid relations during the woman’s fertile periods, and that includes practitioners of natural family planning (NFP).  Continued use of the term ‘rhythm method’ is meant to focus attention on that practice’s mediocre success rate and obscure the much better one of contemporary NFP.

The NYT’s Amanda Schaffer wrote June 13 that Bovens says that “couples who try to prevent pregnancy by avoiding sex during the woman’s most fertile time of month may be more likely to produce embryos that do not develop or implant in the womb.  If this is correct, he writes, then ‘millions of rhythm method cycles per year globally depend for their success on massive embryonic death.’  Those who worry about early embryonic death should be as concerned about the rhythm method as they are about other forms of contraception, like Plan B, and about embryonic stem cell research, he asserts.”  Note the continued dishonest labeling of Plan B, the brand name for the morning-after pill, as ‘contraception’ when, in fact, it acts after conception to prevent implantation.

Bovens’ argument hinges on the empirical question of whether embryos conceived at the very beginning or very end of a woman’s fertile period, using an ‘old’ ovum or ‘old’ seed, are less likely to survive than those conceived in the middle.  If so, he theorizes that NFP practitioners are more likely to conceive such unborn children because they time their relations to coincide with the ends of the cycles, when a day’s error could lead to such a conception.  Those using condoms, not to mention those not seeking to avoid conception, typically do not time their sexual relations in such a fashion.

A woman’s body can store a man’s seed for up to five days, so ‘old’ seed can fertilize an egg several days after relations toward the beginning of a woman’s fertile period.  At the other end of the period, an ‘old’ ovum that has been waiting can then be fertilized once the couple resume sexual activity.  Relations during the middle of the period, in contrast, are likely to result in the uniting of young seed and a young ovum.  Also, there may be variations in the viability of embryos conceived during a fertile period of normal length and one of abnormal length; the latter could result in the couple’s misjudging the proper time for intercourse, making conception during periods of abnormal length more common among NFP practitioners than among those who use condoms.

Bovens’ article rests upon more than one empirical question.  One is the assertion that NFP practitioners are more likely to conceive children at the ends of a woman’s fertile period.  Another, very problematic one: Bovens himself clearly states that his assertions depend on whether an embryo conceived at one of the ends of a fertile period is more likely to die.  In a response to critics of his original article, Bovens wrote June 12, “For my argument to work, it must be the case that the probability of viability given that a conception occurs with ageing sperm or ovum or during an atypical cycle is lower than the probability of viability given that a conception occurs with fresh sperm and a fresh ovum and during a typical cycle.”

Dr. Mark Whitty of Dublin wrote a letter to the JME criticizing the science behind Bovens’ argument.  “Any conception is as viable as the next, barring a fatal genetic or developmental defect; there is no truth to the old ‘old sperm’ or ‘old ovum’ speculation, or its ‘twice as likely to be viale,’ ‘lack resilience’ and ‘reduced survival chances’ assumption,” he wrote.  He also noted that the high rate of embryonic death and spontaneous abortion often cited by experts could be phony. “Bovens’ first assumption that 50% of natural human conceptions are lost is an often-repeated figure based on problematic research in 1956 using histological analysis of hysterectomies where intercourse was encouraged prior to surgery,” he said.  “The higher figure of 78% often quoted rests on a 1975 analysis of an hypothesis based on a series of weak assumptions.  Animal studies commonly give percentages in single figures.”

In other words, no one knows what proportion of human embryos are naturally lost after conception, but among animals, it is less than 10%. And nobody knows if ‘old’ seed or an ‘old’ egg is really less likely to produce a conceived child who survives than ‘fresh’ specimens, as even Bovens indicates when read closely.

“Tarin et al. (2000) review a fifty-year literature not only on the effect of ageing gametes on pre-menstruation embryonic loss, but also on fertilization, spontaneous abortions and the pathology of the offspring. A range of studies is reviewed of in vivo and in vitro fertilizations with ageing gametes, involving humans, non-human mammalians, and non-mammalians.  These studies are not always univocal,” Bovens admits. “Furthermore, we often have to extrapolate from non-human animal populations, in vitro contexts, and patients with a history of infertility to what might be happening in human populations of normal fertility in in vivo contexts.  Sometimes the best we can do is to guess what would provide the best explanation for experimental results.  Nonetheless, I do think that there is a trend present which supports the idea that viability given conception may vary with the age of the ovum, the age of the sperm and whether the cycle is or is not typical.”

So there is ‘trend’ that ‘supports’ the notion that viability ‘may’ vary. We’ll have to wait for solid evidence.

Of course, none of the above affects the moral distinction between NFP, which works with the human body by using its natural cycles and demands self-discipline, and condoms, which work against the body and encourage self-indulgence.  Nor does it elevate the moral status of oral contraceptives, which kill millions of unborn embryonic children a year in this country alone.  And, to be fair, the falsity of Bovens’ argument doesn’t justify the use of NFP as ‘Catholic birth control’ by selfish couples.

In his June 12 defense, Bovens concedes, “So far I have tried to defend the assumptions that come into the model.  But of course, it is another thing to check whether the predictions of the model hold true in the real world.  Clearly we know too little to fill in the values of all the parameters.”  He suggests an expensive study that could shed light on this question, but then says, “This would be one step forward, but it would still not yield information about pre-implantation embryonic loss. . . .” So even his proposal wouldn’t resolve the question.  Perhaps it is not meant to be resolved, but only to discredit pro-life people.

Joseph A. D’Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the Population Research Institute.

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