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This Is Why Elizabeth Hasselbeck’s Little Meltdown Matters

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I had some good fun snickering at Elizabeth Hasselbeck’s little hissyfit on The View about Plan B, where she ranted about how immoral it was and Barbara Walters had to remind her to listen to other people and be calm.

And there were some people (not just here) who questioned whether she’d actually said “life begins at penetration” (she didn’t, but it was a fair characterization of her argument) and whether we weren’t being a little too hard on her. And, after all, does it matter? It’s just a silly TV show.

But here’s why her rant matters: she’s spreading misinformation and lies to a national TV audience that’s already sadly ignorant about the way Plan B (and their bodies) work:

Some depressing results of a survey of women’s knowledge about emergency contraception:
* Only one in five women knows about EC.
* One-third of those women confuse Plan B with RU-486, the abortion pill.
* Less than 8 percent of women really understand how EC works and when it should be used.

It’s no wonder women are confusing Plan B with RU-486. It’s something that reporters and researchers certainly have a hard time getting right.

For the record…
Plan B can be taken up to 72 hours after sex, and works by preventing pregnancy. If a woman who takes Plan B is already pregnant, it does not cause an abortion.
Mifeprex (RU-486) is taken between 3 and 10 weeks after a woman is confirmed to be pregnant, and causes an abortion.

If women don’t know these things, I wonder how clueless most men are?

The research also contained some insight into women’s opinions about Plan B:
* 76% think EC will reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies
* 21% think EC is immoral
* 44% think it will increase unprotected sex

Sigh.

The reason I say that Gawker’s characterization of Hasselbeck’s arguments as “life begins at penetration” (or, as Amanda puts it, “Sperm Magic”) is fair is that, in order for her to maintain that Plan B is an abortifacient and thus immoral, she has to either be mistaken about the way conception/fertilization/pregnancy actually work and thus is ignorantly arguing that conception occurs instantaneously (and thus Plan B acts as an abortifacient) — or else she knows damn well that it doesn’t work that way and she’s deliberately eliding Plan B and RU-486 to create the impression that they do the same thing.

I’m going to guess it’s the former, because she’s no doctor or pharmacist — and there are plenty of doctors and pharmacists who do the latter even though they should know better.

It matters because there’s a war on contraception being waged right now, and it depends on the kind of misinformation generated by those doctors and pharmacists (and crisis pregnancy centers) and spread by useful tools like Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who has a TV show that reaches millions of women every day. And not all of them are the kind of lunatic who thinks that Planned Parenthood promotes bestiality. Many are simply uninformed about the way their bodies work. They know they don’t want to have unwanted pregnancies, but maybe they don’t feel so comfortable with the idea that they might be aborting a pregnancy.

And let’s also not forget that Plan B is really no more than a high-dose version of standard oral contraceptives. If we allow the lie that Plan B is an abortifacient to spread and to take hold in the mind of the public, we will find ourselves having to defend oral contraceptives from open attack. Do we really want that?

ETA: Page Rockwell at Salon has more.

21 thoughts on This Is Why Elizabeth Hasselbeck’s Little Meltdown Matters

  1. I love where she says that it’s a slipperly slope – eventually we will end up eliminating all life! Whoops…

  2. I’ve read so much conflicting information about EC that I’m confused, and I’m hardly ignorant about this sort of stuff. On the one hand, one “school” of EC understanding has it that EC is a “huge dose of The Pill” and that it works by preventing the ovary from releasing an egg. Members of this school often roll their eyes in exasperation at anti-EC’ers, pointing out that no ovulation = no conception = no abortion. Dummy. But this leaves open the question of “what if the ovum already flew the coop?” — EC doesn’t force it back into the ovary, so conception could occur normally — in fact, unless the woman is due to ovulate the day or so after the EC is taken, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

    OK, on the other hand we have the folks who insist that EC works by preventing the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. This has the advantage of making sense, but is not an effective rejoinder to the Hasselbecks of the world who insist that forcing the uterus to reject the fertilized egg is not only abortion but hurts the widdle eggs feewings. Never mind that the body frequently does this anyway — that’s God’s will, not blastocide (blastocysticide?). I was frankly quite baffled at the comments in response to the H. thread yesterday — it’s pretty clear why she opposes EC (based on School Two thinking) and I didn’t think BW’s response that “we need to find a way to talk about this” was very helpful. “We need to find a way to talk about this” generally means “let’s not talk about this” and lo and behold, it worked!

    If anyone can clear this up for me, I’d greatly appreciate it — but PLEASE know what you’re talking about. It doesn’t do us any good to spout off about this person or that one not understanding how EC works if we ourselves don’t know.

  3. Ok, I’ll give it a go: EC contains a large dose of synthetic progesterone, a naturally occurring human hormone. Progesterone prevents pregnancy purely by preventing ovulation. Unless you give a woman enough progesterone to poison her, progesterone cannot interfere with an already fertilized egg. In fact, IVF clinics prep infertile clients for an attempt at implanting eggs fertilized outside their bodies by giving them doses of progesterone, after all it hardly matters whether they ovulate or not since that half of the equation has been taken care of mechanically.

    In other words, if we buy the rhetoric that EC causes abortions than all those “snowflake” mothers are the Right’s idea of Hitler. They’ve been pumping their bodies full of supposed abortifacients in order to carry the frozen embryo!

    Don’t worry about the progesterone in EC accidentally assisting the implantation of an already fertilized egg, though. Since it’s taken up to 72 hours after intercourse, it’ll already be out of your system by the time the blastocyst meanders into the uterus to implant (up to two weeks, I believe).

  5. I find that women are clueless about all aspects of reproductive health. Severa years ago, I did a lengthy feature on HRT for a feminist magazine, and the editor insisted I cut some of it because it sounded like I was “blaming” women. Well, of course it isn’t women’s fault that both scientific research and the medical profession doesn’t give a damn about women’s reproductive health. But yes, women are more than lapse in learning about their own bodies and about various treatments and procedures which affect them. They tend to not even ask questions. That’s what I was pointing out, but the editor would have none of it. I wanted to withdraw the piece, but I had put so much work into it, I went ahead and made the cuts.

  6. See, here’s the thing for me… even if Plan B causes an egg not to implant… that happens a lot anyway.

    If that’s the equivalent of murder, then it follows that every time you have unportected sex but don’t get pregnant, that that’s as tragic as a person dying of cancer…

    I guess if you want to set up shrines to all the poor blastocysts that’s okay with me, crazy, but it’s a slightly baffling philosophy to push on the rest of us.

    It would also seem to follow that the only moral way to act is complete celibacy, since otherwise you’re taking a huge risk of murdering a bunch of poor little blastocysts.

  7. Thanks Mangus, I’d already seen those two posts. I’ve done a little more research and apparently the deal is, if the ovum is in the chute, regardless of whether EC is taken or not, conception can occur. Maybe the name should be changed to “emergency contra-ovulation” or something… As TheGlimmering says, by the time the fertilized egg hits the uterus, the EC is out of the system anyway. So what we’re dealing with is less than 100% effectiveness, which is fine. I’m not sure if that’s what *I* have been missing or if that’s been missing from the public debate altogether, but I think I have my head around this now. Thanks to those of you who helped clear this up.

  8. I was under the impression that EC could prevent implantation. In fact, I was directly told so, by a doctor who should know what she’s talking about.

    When I had an abortion, four of five of us having abortions in that clinic that day had taken the morning-after-pill (in my case, after a condom broke). One had had a failed chemical abortion (as part of a clinical study) in addition.

    The doctor who performed my abortion is highly respected in the field of women’s reproductive medicine. At the time she was running one of the first clinical trials of RU-486, which I chose not to participate in since I was living with my mother and a surgical abortion is easier to hide. She asked me if the doctor who had prescribed the morning-after-pill had asked me any questions about my last period or any cycle markers, and I said no. She told me he should have. According to her, if a woman has not yet ovulated, she should take EC as soon as possible after unprotected sex in order to prevent ovulation. If a woman has ovulated, she should wait three days and then take EC, in order to prevent implantation. She told me most doctors were not familiar enough with the process to know this. This was ten years ago, when EC was first on the market.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if some advocating EC choose to downplay the “may prevent implantation” angle due to the wingnuts who believe in protecting blastocysts at all costs. It’s also possible that the science has matured in the last decade, and what the doctor told me may not be the current state of medical knowledge.

  9. The most recent studies have shown that EC does NOT prevent implantation.

    There are questions about regular oral contraception changing the uterine lining, and whether or not that might interfere with implantation, however due to the short time one takes EC, it does not have time to affect the lining, and therefore has no effect on implantation.

    These studies were completed in the last 6 months, or so.

  10. Thanks Caren. I actually just came back here to correct myself, since I just did some research and found out about that large 2005 study showing that there is very little, if any, interference with implantation.

    So my doctor’s knowledge has been superceded since I spoke to her. Good to know.

    Not that it would matter ethically either way. IUDs interfere with implantation, but they are not considered abortifacients by anyone but the craziest fundies. And even if they were abortifacients, so? Abortion is legal here, at least for a while yet.

  11. Thanks Caren. I actually just came back here to correct myself, since I just did some research and found out about that large 2005 study showing that there is very little, if any, interference with implantation.

    So my doctor’s knowledge has been superceded since I spoke to her. Good to know.

    Not that it would matter ethically either way. IUDs interfere with implantation, but they are not considered abortifacients by anyone but the craziest fundies. And even if they were abortifacients, so? Abortion is ethical and legal, at least for a while yet.

  13. twf, the reason it’s important for them to characterize things that prevent abortion as causing abortion is two-fold:
    1) get people who are opposed to abortion to throw up their hands and say “yeah, I guess the only choices women have are abstinence or having lots of babies”
    2) paint sensible people as hypocrites

  14. Another interesting factoid that came out fairly recently is that breastfeeding acts as a suppressor of implantation rather than a suppressor of ovulation and/or conception. So women who are using breastfeeding as natural birth control are highly likely to have an egg fertilized by their partner, and then have the blastocyst fail to implant. In other words, if Mrs. Hasselbeck truly believes life begins at conception, and she’s breastfed her child, chances are she’s committed murder quite unaware. Someone really ought to tell explain that to her.

  19. Years ago when I worked the abortion clinic days at my local PP, at least once a month we would have a woman in counciling who was like Hasselbeck. Looked like her, talked like her, smelled of Ralph Lauren perfume and priviledge. Sometimes with a headband, even. And she would inevitably say that she didn’t believe in abortion and everyone would know she thought that her aborting to be able to stay in college was not at all the same as the woman in the waiting room next to her aborting “as a form of birth control” or whatever the line was that was popular at the moment. And then the councilor would say that maybe she wasn’t really a good candidate for the procedure and maybe she need to take some more time to think about it and BOOM, the woman would be up in the stirrups.
    I do not believe woman who talk like Hasselbeck. I don’t believe Hasselbeck herself believes what she said. The pendulum is swinging right in America and I think she just is going with the flow. You know, her way of saying, ” I for one welcome our new fundamentalist overlords” or whatever.

  20. And I wanted to add that I also believe that this is the true reason why one cannot really successfully and constructively argue with someone spouting the kind of shit Hasselbeck did on The View. Because they don’t really believe it themselves and are playing a role. They just can’t conceptualize that they or their daughter is ever going to be the one up in stirrups.

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