The morning-after pill: another version of the facts

Gonzalo Herranz.
Professor of Medical Ethics, University of Navarra.
Letter sent to the Diario de Navarra on 11 May 2001 and not published by decision publishing house.

I believe that the greatest progress that medical ethics has brought us in recent years has been the elevation of the patient to the dignity of a moral agent, to the rank of a person who cannot be deceived, obfuscated or substituted when it comes to making decisions. On the contrary, the doctor must inform the patient and answer his questions; he must allow him time to think and to decide freely.

That is why I suffer when I see that many reports on the morning-after pill are uninformative, biased, and hide significant parts of reality.

Specifically, it is proclaimed that the pill is not an abortifacient. We read it yesterday in Diario de Navarra: "the World Health Organisation assures us that it has no abortifacient effects". That is correct, but, in order to be able to say it, the WHO has first had to torture the words and make them confess what they did not want to say. Almost 30 years ago, the WHO commissioned group to change the definition of conception. This was necessary in order to leave the field open to contraception. It was known, and above all it was obvious, that many contraceptives prevent the nesting of embryos and thus end the lives of already conceived human beings. The experts made a very subtle change: they said that in future conception would no longer be the same as fertilisation, but that the first day of existence would be delayed to the moment of implantation of the blastocyst in the endometrium. And since abortion is the termination of pregnancy, there could no longer be abortions before the 14th day. It would be incorrect to call the destruction of embryos less than 14 days old an abortion. Some listened, others refused to be fooled.

And that is where we are. In the new WHO language, there is no "official" name for the elimination of innocent human beings under 14 days old. It is taboo. For those for whom the human embryo has no value, the WHO's lexical sleight of hand may not care. But for those of us who believe, because this is how our own lives began, that human beings, however small they may be, are from day 1 a priceless commodity, the WHO-sponsored word-shaming is a bit of a scam. Nobody believes that the distance from Pamplona to Tudela changes because some jokers add a zero to the figures on the kilometre plates. Changing the name or leaving an action without a name does not change its substance.

In recent days there has been talk, in very technical language, of endometrial contraception, postcoital interception and the anti-nausea effect, but it has been concealed that, behind these very scientific expressions, the intentional elimination of human beings is often hidden. This is what is ethically relevant. Whether or not to talk about abortion is, to a certain extent, indifferent to the underlying ethical reality. To obfuscate women by telling them that nothing will ever happen with the new pill, biologically and ethically, because it is harmless and not abortive, is a reprehensible, harshly paternalistic action. It is an insult to women by considering them incapable of understanding what they are doing and of taking responsibility for their actions. In order to prevent them from considering and solving a problem, which is theirs alone, their freedom is restricted, they are not given the opportunity to choose. It is wrong to ignore that, in a certain percentage of cases, a human life can be cut short, a human destiny cancelled, the promise of a life staff annulled by the morning-after pill. This is a serious status , which it is not right to trivialise with word games, however suggestive or prestigious they may seem.