Last week I noted a contradiction in the treatment of life issues by liberal journalists: They simultaneously claim that the belief that some contraceptives may cause human embryos to die is a superstition and that laws recognizing human embryos as persons would cause these contraceptives to be outlawed.
Both halves of this view are false. There is evidence that some drugs marketed as contraceptives can cause embryos to die. But the belief that an embryo is a person with rights, pre-eminently the right not to be deliberately killed, does not entail the view that the law must prohibit all actions that pose a risk of exposing an embryo to death.
I had never, however, seen these contradictory views simultaneously expressed. Courtesy of MSNBC, we now have an example of the contradiction being expressed in one sentence: “Yet personhood would indeed threaten some forms of contraception – the ones Personhood supporters insist, despite evidence and medical definitions, are actually abortion, because of the unproven claim that they will interfere with a fertilized egg’s implantation.”
Two asides. First, there’s another contradiction here: Saying that a claim is “unproven” is of course not the same thing as saying that it is contrary to the evidence we have (or suggesting that it has been proven to be wrong). Second, pro-lifers typically avoid, and anyone seeking to provide a neutral description of these issues should avoid, the phrase “fertilized egg,” which tends to obscure the substantial difference between an egg cell and an embryo.
Back to the main point. Let’s assume that we know to a certainty that IUDs, the Pill, and Plan B never cause human embryos to die. How exactly are laws that declare human embryos to be persons with rights supposed to cause these contraceptives to be banned? Are we to believe that after, say, Colorado passes a personhood referendum, law enforcement in the state will side with superstition and decide that Plan B and the rest can’t be sold, a court will then fall for the same superstition, and no higher court will then disagree? Even in a world without Roe v. Wade—which we’d have to have for this scenario to happen—this all seems rather far-fetched.