By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
Ohio just took the Science Stupidity Award away from Idaho.
Back in February of 2015, Idaho representative Vito Barbieri was listening to nearly three hours of testimony on a state bill banning doctors from prescribing any abortion-inducing medication through a new telemedicine system. Barbieri gained worldwide infamy for his anatomical ignorance when he asked if a woman could just swallow a small camera so doctors could conduct a remote gynecological exam.
But that represented just one male legislator’s ignorance. Ohio has now taken first place in science stupidity by their Legislature considering Ohio HB413, a bill requiring doctors to “re-implant an ectopic pregnancy” into a woman’s uterus. A doctor who fails to do this would face charges of “abortion murder.” Such a procedure does not exist in medical science and for good reason.
An ectopic pregnancy occurs when an egg is fertilized and implants outside of the body of the uterus. The Fallopian tubes are open-ended. A sperm usually fertilizes an egg and after 3–4 days of development while drifting down the Fallopian tubes, the embryo usually implants on the inside wall of the uterus. But an embryo can implant earlier alongside the Fallopian tube or even attach to the outside of an intestine. Thus the term “ectopic” refers to any such outside-the-uterine-body implantation. The further from the uterine wall, the more dangerous the pregnancy. And the less chance of survival.
The uterus is a marvelous structure that provides the mother’s portion of the placenta. It is lined with blood vessels that clamp off upon childbirth so the mother does not bleed to death. Implantations outside the uterus stimulate blood vessel growth from other tissues that do not have this ability to clamp off. There is little chance of the fetus surviving without the special uterine placenta. And there is a very high risk of the mother bleeding to death if there is any tear.
And finally, by the time a mother discovers she is pregnant with an ectopic pregnancy, it is not possible to surgically remove this ectopic complex and get the uterine wall to form a normal placenta. But this Ohio decision was not about science but political extremism, hoping to force a legal showdown in the Supreme Court. Writing laws counter to solid medical science is probably not the best way to win.
This widespread ignorance was common in the 1800s. That is what a young nurse named Margaret Sanger faced when she attended poor women who had too many children and not enough food to feed them. Although Sanger (1879–1966) was well off, she had compassion for these women who knew that another baby meant more hunger for their family. There were almost no methods known to prevent pregnancy except abstinence. And Sanger worked under a male-doctor dominated healthcare system that would not allow advising married mothers to “just say no.”
When Sanger wrote brochures—describing ways to prevent pregnancy and discussing gonorrhea and syphilis—and mailed them, the U.S. postal censor Anthony Comstock charged her with multiple counts of violating federal statutes for distributing “literature of illegal character.” Her actions changed public opinion and that era of Comstockery and postal censorship soon ended.
Sanger was a proponent of birth control and founded what would become Planned Parenthood. She fought for decades to get contraceptives approved. And she was instrumental in getting funding for the research that led to the birth control pill. In spite of being demonized by anti-abortion groups today, Sanger was opposed to abortions. She had seen far too many deaths in her early nursing work that were due to back street abortions. In “Woman and the New Race,” Sanger wrote: “while there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.” In her book “Family Limitation” Sanger wrote: “no one can doubt that there are times when an abortion is justifiable but they will become unnecessary when care is taken to prevent conception. This is the only cure for abortions.” Simply, with good sex education and available contraception, Sanger believed there would be no unwanted pregnancies and therefore no need for abortion.
Sanger succeeded in making contraceptives legal and available. But we have failed to provide sex education, as is clearly seen by our continual production of anatomically-ignorant legislators.
John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.