Opposition to IUD’s, like opposition to vaccines, is putting American families at risk—and a Colorado controversy shows that misguided faith and scientific ignorance are to blame.
When a pilot program in Colorado offered teens state-of-the-art long acting contraceptives—IUD’s and implants—teen births plummeted by 40%, along with a drop in abortions. The program saved the state 42.5 million dollars in a single year, over five times what it cost. But rather than extending or expanding the program, some Colorado Republicans are trying to kill it—even if this stacks the odds against Colorado families. Why? Because they insist, wrongly, that IUD’s work by killing embryos, which they believe are sacred. This claim, which is based in bad faith and scientific ignorance, undermines fiscal prudence and flourishing families.
Excellent Family Planning Transforms Family Life
Research from around the world shows that children and families are more likely to thrive when women are able to delay, space, and limit childbearing. The benefits are enormous: healthier moms and babies, less infant mortality and special needs, more family prosperity, higher education, less domestic conflict and abuse—even lower crime rates. Whole communities gain as women (and men!) become more productive, creating a virtuous economic cycle. Public budgets become easier to balance, and more revenues can be invested into infrastructure instead of basic needs.
Despite mountains of evidence showing that family planning empowers family flourishing, early and unwanted pregnancy has been a tough pattern to change, even in the United States. Until very recently, half of U.S. pregnancies were unintended, with over a third of those ending in abortion. For single women under the age of 30, 70 percent of pregnancies are unintended. For teens that’s more than 80 percent. This pattern has many causes, but part of the problem is antiquated family planning technologies that are highly prone to human error. In any given year, 1 out of 11 couples relying on the Pill will end up with a surprise pregnancy. For couples relying on condoms alone, this rises to 1 out of 6!
By contrast, state-of-the-art IUD’s and implants drop the pregnancy rate below 1 in 500 while allowing a prompt return to normal fertility when they are removed. With a modern IUD in place, a woman enjoys he same level of protection as with tubal sterilization. In other words, we now have the technology to make surprise pregnancy truly surprising. It is easy to understand why advocates for children like the American Academy of Pediatrics, and advocates for healthy families like the California Family Health Council and CDC are eager to see these top tier birth control methods become the new normal.
Ignorant Obstructionism
People who care about flourishing families, including those who see themselves compassionate conservatives, should be doing everything in their power to help facilitate a transition to these new technologies. Above all, compassion and prudence dictate that these tools should be available to young and poor women, who (along with their children) are most likely to be harmed by an unexpected pregnancy.
But religiously motivated opponents to modern contraception—led by conservative Catholics—are instead spreading misinformation, insisting that highly effective contraceptives are not actually contraceptives but instead are like “having an abortion mill in your body.” They further insist that each embryo is precious and merits the protections of “personhood.” Colorado has been a battleground in which fetal-rights advocates have repeatedly tried to pass legislation that gives legal standing to fertilized eggs and later embryonic stages of life.
Most recently these same conservative advocates and politicians have come out fighting against programs that would make IUD’s and implants available to young women, even those who already are teen moms, desperately trying to take care of the children they already have and relying on public support to do so.
How Modern IUD’s Actually Work
In reality, all family planning methods available in the U.S. today are true contraceptives: they prevent fertilization of an egg by a sperm.
Pregnancy can be stopped at four points: 1. preventing the production of gametes (eggs and sperm), 2. blocking fertilization (conception), 3. preventing implantation of a fertilized egg, or 4. aborting an implanted pregnancy. Modern IUD’s are designed to prevent fertilization:
- A nonhormonal copper IUD releases copper ions that interfere with sperm motility. The presence of copper may also change the surface of the egg so that it is less easily penetrated by a sperm. In addition, inflammatory cells evoked in the uterine cavity in response to the IUD kill sperm before they can ascend to the fallopian tubes, where fertilization occurs. In this regard, one can view the copper IUD as in intrauterine spermicide.
- A hormonal IUD releases a mostly local dose of levonorgestrel, a hormone in many birth control pills. It causes the mucus at the opening to the cervix to thicken so that sperm can’t get through. Thus, this IUD can be considered a barrier contraceptive, like a cervical cap.
A modern IUD can be thought of as a drug delivery system which has the potential to deliver a variety of drugs to a small target: the cavity of the uterus. In the future, IUDs may be used to treat a variety of reproductive problems, and some are used for this purpose today. But the primary and intended mechanism of existing copper and hormonal IUDs, by design, is to prevent conception, and that is what each of these does.
But What If . . . .
What if a sperm got past that mucus plug or despite the spermicidal effects of copper managed to swim up the fallopian tube? What if a sperm and egg did unite? Could the IUD interfere with implantation? Yes. However, since fertilization is rare with either modern IUD, a fertilized egg failing to implant and flushing out is also rare. By contrast, when a sexually active woman is not using contraception, she may flush out a fertilized egg most months until she gets pregnant. Best estimates suggest that 60-80 percent of fertilized eggs never become babies. All of this adds up to a counter-intuitive fact: women who are using contraceptives to prevent pregnancy kill fewer embryos than women who are trying to get pregnant, and the more effective the contraception is, the fewer embryos die.
The Reproductive Funnel
We now know that nature or nature’s god designed reproduction as a big funnel. More eggs and sperm get produced than will ever meet. More eggs get fertilized than will ever implant. More fertilized eggs implant than will be carried to term by a female body. Genetic recombination is a highly imperfect process, and nature compensates by rejecting most fertilized eggs.
In some animals, the mother’s body aborts or reabsorbs an embryo if her stress level is too high or her protein level is too low. Alternately, her body may hold the fertilized eggs in a sort of suspended animation until conditions improve. Human bodies also have several ways to reduce the number of unhealthy babies, by decreasing fertility and increasing spontaneous abortion under bad circumstances. But like genetic recombination, this process is imperfect. Perfectly healthy embryos flush out, while some with birth defects—even horrible defects—get through.
Since spontaneous abortion is a natural and common part of human reproduction—one could say that every fertile woman has an abortion mill in her body—contraceptives actually reduce the number of fertilized eggs that fail to become babies, and the more effective they are at preventing conception, the more embryonic death they prevent. IUD’s are some of the most effective contraceptives available, on par with sterilization. A woman who believes that embryonic life is precious, either to her or to her god, should use the most effective contraceptive available.
Violating Their Own Values and Public Trust
Given these realities, Colorado politicians who undermine access to state of the art contraceptives are neither minimizing embryonic death nor promoting family values.
To reiterate, the research is global and clear: When women are forced to rely on less effective family planning methods, more spontaneous and therapeutic abortions result. So do more ill-timed and unhealthy births. More unhealthy infants suffer and die. A greater percent of children are born to single moms or unstable partnerships. Family conflict increases. More children suffer abuse or struggle with developmental disabilities. More families get mired in poverty. More youth engage in antisocial behavior, including early, indiscriminant childbearing. Public costs associated with teen pregnancy, maternal health, special education, poverty and criminal justice swell. State budgets become more difficult to balance.
This is what conservative Republicans who undermine family planning programs are putting in motion, despite the fact that all of these trends run directly counter to their expressed values.
Ins and Outs of Rabbit-Hole Reasoning
The upside-down priorities of some Colorado legislators illustrate how unquestionable, ideology-based beliefs coupled with motivated reasoning can lead even decent people to violate their own values, while still believing they are doing the right thing.
Republican legislators live in an information web that has been shaped by the Vatican’s opposition to family planning–now picked up and echoed by some conservative Protestant sects and repackaged as “religious freedom.” Another set of dogmas come from Neo-liberalism, for example the belief that the least government is the best government.
Once foundational assumptions like these take root, each acts as a filter, allowing in certain types of evidence and ideas, and excluding others. On Being Certain, by neurologist Robert Burton lays out this process in detail, and Michael Shermer’s book, Why Smart People Believe Weird Things, explains why intelligence provides painfully little protection against rabbit-hole reasoning.
All of us engage in processes known as confirmatory thinking and motivated reasoning to defend a priori positions. For true believers of any stripe, whether political or religious, contradictory information gets attacked by the ideology’s “immune system.” Social networks exaggerate this tendency by screening incoming information and identifying trusted messengers or sources, with any belief endorsed by a competing tribe automatically suspect. Oppositional thinking sets in: if my enemy thinks this is good; then it must be bad. And smart people caught in this spiral simply apply their intelligence to the task of defending what they already believe—or want to.
All of these challenges to truth seeking are universal patterns, which is why the scientific method has been called, “What we know about how not to fool ourselves.”
A Conservative Legislator Beats the Odds
Thanks to the power of ideology coupled with rabbit hole reasoning, the data about family planning and family flourishing create a huge challenge for some conservative legislators. Acknowledging that excellent family planning could help Colorado families to flourish (as it does everywhere else) puts an evidence-based Republican at odds with colleagues who are determined to shut down government programs or co-religionists who seek to prevent “artificial family planning.” By contrast, they may find themselves unexpectedly aligned with people they don’t much like. And so, instead of doing the hard work of questioning assumptions, some do the slightly less hard work of convincing themselves this isn’t necessary.
Fortunately, even tightly defended groups like fundamentalist sects or small countercultural cults or extreme political movements or ideologically motivated wings within political parties fail to completely close off inquiry, and individuals do buck the current. At the beginning of February, Colorado Representative Don Coram co-sponsored a bill that would expand IUD access among low income women. Coram is fiscally conservative and opposed to abortion, and in public statements he cited both of these values in support of his bill. “If you are against abortions and you are a fiscal conservative, you better take a long hard look at this bill because that accomplishes both of those,” he said. Research with 10,000 women in St. Louis provides further confirmation that he is right. Coram’s willingness to follow the evidence and buck party line for the sake of his constituents is something we could use more of on both sides of the aisle.
The author would like to thank Dr. David Grimes of the University of North Carolina for his input on medical aspects of this article.
Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including AlterNet, Salon, the Huffington Post, Grist, and Jezebel. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.
AwayPoint 
Ironic. Those who claim to preserve life are in fact guilty of killing it through their opposition to contraception. The Pogo insight comes to mind here: “We have met the enemy and they are us!”
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Yes. The other thing we don’t talk about is that in the U.S. alone more than 600 women die each year from pregnancy, almost a third of those from pregnancies they never even meant to have.
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This is about men trying to maintain control over women’s sexuality. Otherwise, it makes no sense at all.
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My grandmother died of a heart attack at the age of thirty-four, when my mother was seven. She had had eight children in the space of seventeen years. Had she had access to some form of birth control, she might have lived long enough for me to meet her, and certainly my mother would have had a much happier life. Instead, she wore her body out far too soon.
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What a painful story. And painfully common among women who had (or have) no means to manage their fertility. That is one of the many reasons that the Church’s opposition to family planning is cruel and immoral! So many women have suffered or died because of this, and so many children and families have been devastated.
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As I understand it, she was quite a lady – in addition to birthing those 8 children, she delivered rural mail on horseback around the turn of the 20th century. I wish I could have known her.
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On the other hand, and there is usually another hand in duality, where I was raised French Canadian families normally numbered around 10 to 16 children and all managed very well. Hardy land people, not citified. And there were no premarital pregnancies, how about that, eh? It wasn’t all wine and roses, of course, but compared to today’s people, these were very healthy individuals. Deaths were rare and usually caused by farming-related accidents, not sickness. Certainly there were no prolonged agonizing sicknesses and slow death as too common today. Rejecting the “past” in favour of new-found technological “cures” for all that ails you isn’t wisdom. This plunge into the great benefits of science devoid of historical perspective and natural common sense is going to turn around and bite the human race in the you know what sooner than later. Science (and vaccines, since these were mentioned as another cure-all panacea) isn’t going to “save” man when the gods are abandoned since it (science and technology) is now learning to take its own place as the new god of the age. Modern man has no sense of belonging; no long-term view of life and land as a unit, hence no respect for life. He’s basically a robot. I’m not crying over the “good old days” nor entertaining any desire to return there, but the future as is being forged in Chinese plastic factories is much more dangerous to the man species than his past – because he’s increasingly putting his trust in the real junk science: the one that is promising heaven on earth, never mind waiting ’til after death. And yet, were it not for the military industrial complex to which science is hopelessly married, enslaved and prostituted, there would be little advances in it. Rejecting common sense “morality” and right living along with religion and gods for their association, and swallowing tshe promises of “science” hook, line and sinker, isn’t the way to go. One should evolve, not only physically, but spiritually and morally, not simply take another way down the beaten path because someone painted new signs on it. It still leads to the same place.
When science says its here to serve mankind, someone may translate the manual when it’s too late and scream: “It’s a cook book… It’s a cook book!”
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“there were no premarital pregnancies – I find that REALLY difficult to believe, Shatara – I really can’t believe that modernity is the cause of premarital pregnancies – perhaps we’re merely more open about talking about them today. And I disagree with what you say about gods and spirituality, which I reject out of hand, but I will say that yours was a well thought out response, some of which I DO agree with, particularly regarding ties to the land and a sense of belonging.
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Well there are fewer premarital pregnancies when girls are forced into marriage as soon as they become fertile, which happened at a later age in past centuries because of poorer nutrition and health status. But none would suggest a miracle on the order of the Virgin Birth. :) Another not so great thing about pregnancy in the past is that the maternal mortality rate absent antibiotics and c-sections is about 1 in 100 live births, which means that when women are having 10-15 babies about one in ten women eventually dies of pregnancy—most commonly hemorrhage at the time of birth I think.
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Valerie is correct: the girls (and boys) married much younger and the sexual urges didn’t cut in as early, since contact between genders was more limited, there being no feedlot mentality high schools and much less free time. Recapping a bit, this community was small, containing some 30-40 family groups, so right away you can see the lesser tensions. While there were some severely poor people here as elsewhere, they didn’t fade into the background noise and were succoured some way or other. I was part of that so I know. Also it was probably one of the last “to the land” communities to exist. There was no electricity – not until 1960 – consequently no TV and radio was a French CBC station from Edmonton, radios being run on batteries. Newspapers came once a week or once a month, depending. Shopping was done by catalogue. Our education consisted of whatever schooling we got when teachers were available, or correspondence courses otherwise – my “high school” was entirely correspondence until grade 12. There were no “kids” on these communities, only little children and adults. At 13 o4 14 we were considered adults and participated in social and financial decisions, since we were involved in the work. I remember well the long northern nights lit by coal oil lamps and on special occasions, the huffing double-mantle gas lamps. I remember watching a couple of B&W movies, the projector being run by a cable to a truck battery outside the house. We used horses for much of the farm work and transportation since the gumbo made the trails all but impassable to motorized traffic much of the time. We cleared land, planted crops, hoped for respite from early frosts and snows, and raised animals, milked cows, sold milk and cream, churned butter by hand, baked bread on those huge wood burning stoves, the works, grew gigantic gardens, canned and butchered our own meat.
We worked hard, took care of each other as we knew how, or saw the need, and we considered the church, school and general store as the centers of our community. Interestingly, we were not ignorant of world issues, far from it. We were smart, tough and proudly independent. It wasn’t our religion (Catholic) or politics (split pretty evenly between Conservative and Liberal) but our sense of value, of personal empowerment, of knowing who we were, what we wanted, and the certainty that we would get there that made us who we were. The personal issues of this modern world would have made us shake our heads in disbelief – and for me, they still do. IUD’s are undoubtedly a great step forward in this reality, but this reality is as narrow-minded and destructive to the human spirit as it gets. Children need to be given real responsibilities that really matter early in life. Their talents and imagination; their revolutionary ability to see things in a new light, these are being totally wasted in today’s society. Children who just a hundred years ago proudly contributed to the income and strength of the home now wander about lost and hopeless – even if they don’t know this is being done to them.
The issues discussed on this forum are real enough. But the solutions are stop-gap and basically pointless. You have over 40,000 victims of oppression dying daily because they are deliberately being denied available basic needs. This is the modern scientific world so full of itself and its “solutions” to man’s problems. But when I hear people extolling science in lieu of religion, I hear the snuffed cries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; of the millions burned with Napalm. I am reminded of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” and I see Monsanto spreading its GMO crops over the planet, followed by increasing dosages of herbicides and pesticides. And I know I’ve seen nothing yet.
I know full well this is off-topic and I know also that I seldom speak with a convenient voice, but someone, sometime, has to speak. I’m not putting down Valerie; I’ve read her book, Trusting Doubt and it resonated well with me. But as individuals we need to develop a much, much broader view of our past, present, future and we need to develop an unassailable sense of personal purpose which no one and nothing but “me” can give me.
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I’m impressed! I don’t agree with everything you’ve said – the same science, for example, that brought us Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also cured polio. Science is good, but it does need constant policing. As Jeff Goldblum said in “Jurassic Park,” “Just because you could, didn’t mean you should!”
We could certainly afford to be more back-to-basics. I’ve often thought that if any kind of national disaster ever occurred, the majority of us would have no idea how to survive. But I certainly can’t see that that would necessitate any form of religion.
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So many of our problems are related to patriarchy. There is another way, and some people on this earth are living it. Here’s an example: http://www.mosuoproject.org/mosuo.htm
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I checked that out, and in fact recommended a friend look it over in regard to writing an article about it. I suspect there are many, MANY alternate lifestyles that we have yet to explore. Any day you learn something new and don’t find your own name in the obituary column, is a good day –
thanks for sharing, Katharine —
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(Of course any day that something new IS your own name in the obituary column, it’s probably going to be all downhill from there –)
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Truly fascinating. After 2 failed marriages I came to the conclusion there is something terribly wrong with the idea of marriage as the life-long (forced) bonding of a man and woman, which too often leads to violence and some form of coercion of the physically stronger partner upon the weaker. Then there’s the property aspect which has plagued women throughout “modern” history, and etc. The idea of the walking marriage would go a long way to resolve this. The supporting economy of the Mosuo also reminds me of the semi-independent economies of the small villages of the Canadian north where I was raised. Of course, the whole idea of forcing more and more individuals into cities is to ensure they cannot resort to this kind of economic independence, hence why “the System” has moved land tenure from small individual farmers to agri-business: method to madness, not a conspiracy theory. Now, if “man” would get it, that intelligent life is meant to be lived compassionately, we could resolve a lot of problems in a hurry, even with a grossly inflated population.
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Quote: “if any kind of national disaster ever occurred, the majority of us would have no idea how to survive. But I certainly can’t see that that would necessitate any form of religion.” I totally agree with you on that. But in a world where there is nothing else to feed from (as was the case where I was growing up), one can choose, even within religion, that which benefits rather than harms. I’ve always seen “the sermon on the mount” of the gospels as the best that “religion” has to offer, hence made that the central theme of my religious days. Needless to say, that is also why I could not remain within religion, for man is innately evil (not a popular thing to admit, yet abundantly true) and the “Jesus” rants against greed, power seeking and a few other ancient and modern “sins” are nowhere popular! Yet if this country became a totalitarian theocracy I would have no problem re-entering my old-time religion since I would insist on living the parts that relate to compassionate living. When will man learn not to make gods out of tools, instead, as you say for science, policing the use of the tools? But then, who’s to do the policing? It always comes down to that, and the “policemen” are usually those with vested interest in how the tool can benefit them personally, hence corruption at all levels of power-wielding. We talk of solutions to our social problems, and I see only one: self-empowerment reached through compassionate living – 24/7, no exceptions. It works, it gives one purpose and it makes the dominoes of power topple away from you when you push the first one over…
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It may seem like I’m arguing with you, but not so, I simply don’t accept ALL that you say. That said, I think that rather than, “man is innately evil,” that Humankind is innately selfish, rather than evil – an evolutionary survival trait that helped Humankind survive – that all too often leads to acts that could well be considered evil. But another trait, without which we as a species could never have survived, is compassion, the ability to empathize with others, and often these two traits, rather than “good” and “evil,” are in frequent conflict with each other.
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(Late again in reading and commenting.) Valerie’s original post is excellent.
Also, a couple of comments re ” shatara46″ lengthy assessments. I do disagree that “current” science can be characterized as lacking “historical perspective.” This is a different “day.” A whole lotta water gone under the bridge, since those ’30s and ’40s when I was growing up. That rural, (low-people-density;” “non-citified,” working farm life accorded lots of healthy (and perhaps physically “wearing”) exercise. And most certainly the “moral code” was way less permissive. But “little sickness” and “No agonizing slow deaths”? Not so sure ’bout that. Need some reliable statistical data on that. And: “10 to 16” healthy, vigorous offspring, each wedded Couple? If one takes a “World View,” that’s no longer such a good thing. (Let’s thank our “Lucky Start for the Real Science that’s trying to add to the :carrying capacity” of our Planet.. And finally, thus: 40,000 children dying daily denied the necessities of life. (I’d guess the number is bigger.) SO: “This is the modern scientific world so full of itself …..” Nope; Wrong. That’s Politics: Money and Power; Dare I say Lazy and Uneducated Electorates; and the resultant Discouragingly Ineffective “Governing” that we’ve got — local to world\wide. Bottom line. We All have to think harder. So, I Hope this isn’t too impolite. And, truly, “shatara46 and everyone else, has lots of very good points made.
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Allan, nothing the least ‘impolite’ about your reply. That’s what discussions should be. I wrote it as I remember it, and remember: very dry and cold country, very low population, few chemicals, and the mind-drive to better ourselves all added to the health aspect that’s been basically lost in today’s madness. I like your comment: we all have to think harder. That’s been the focus of my entire life: there has to be a better way, and now I have found that better way for myself. On the dangerous topic of science as the savior or bogeyman, it’s hopelessly polarized. We already are ruled by three “gods” – politics, religion and money. Science (treating this as an entity, not a tool here) has to either become a god in its own right, or latch itself securely to one or all of the other three, which is exactly what it has done: it primarily serves the military industrial complex, which includes all of so-called health care. The world has become a capitalist state and the prime motive is profit. Politics may be responsible for the horrible conditions experienced in much of the world but politics has also become the unabashed whore of the capitalist state – without money you don’t have a voice, or power. If you try anyway, you get buried in lies or you get killed. Therefore the “blame” for the world’s condition goes to the current ruling deity: money. This is Earthian reality as I see it. In his little book, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, Itzhak Bentov writes about the rise and fall of a god. It has to do with believers. If an idea is powerfully, successfully promoted it becomes a god, and when support wanes or fails, the god “dies” – and he’s right, of course. We saw that with Marxist communism in the USSR. Any “god” can be killed – all that’s needed is to stop believing in it. Can man exist without the need to worship something, anything? Can he learn to live freely, in self-empowerment without gods, leaders, rulers, way-showers? No? Then man cannot get out of the hole he’s dug for himself. Can man learn to live compassionately? No? Then same answer.
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Another one of your very thorough articles. Thanks.
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I’m a city kid. My parents were city kids. My father was sent to his relatives outside of the city every summer because of the danger of polio. My grandfather started working at age 12, fled Europe because his mother had a second son making him draftable into the Tsar’s army, and died at 75 from heart disease. Thanks for the excellent article , Valerie. Thanks to science, I don’t have to worry about polio, my mom didn’t have more children than she and my dad could afford, nor did they have a child who might have been affected by Rh disease.
You glorify the past way to much, Shatara46. It may have been great for you and your family, but it was nothing to write home about for many others. Look up pictures of children sorting coal at the turn of 20th century America, or the tenements of New York City. I dread a return to child labor. Better that teens be asked to contribute to their communities by volunteering, which some schools require for graduation, and remain in school to become contributing members of a non-agrarian society.
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I’m a nurse-midwife and have been fighting upstream against these inaccuracies about IUD mechanism of action for almost 20 years. Preach it, sister: I’m getting tired.
I find it especially compelling that free LARCs (long acting reversible contraceptives) more than pay for their own cost. The cheaper and more accessible LARCs are, the more money the government saves.
I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that LARCs and bicycles could save the world.
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Not sure they’d go so far as the final permanent SAVE, but they’d sure help a lot. :-)
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