A Rebuttal of Dr. Patrick Johnston’s article, "Are Oral Contraceptives Abortifacient?"

by Jonathan O’Toole

(Christian Gallery News Service, November 9, 2004)  James 1:6, "…he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways."

In June, Dr. Patrick Johnston forwarded to my email for review a series of articles he has written putting forth the statements of belief for the Association of Pro-Life Physicians, an organization he has founded and is only beginning to promote. The motto of the organization is taken from the Oath of Hippocrates: "First, Do No Harm."

However, as I reached the end of the piece, instead of finding myself enlightened on the subject, I was entirely flummoxed. Not only had I not received a satisfactory answer to the central question posed in the title, but I was more confused than ever as I tried to understand where Dr. Johnston stood on the issue at hand.

My email exchanges with Dr. Johnston on the subject over the next few months did nothing to clear up the ambiguity of his position. The doctor justifies those who prescribe OCs, welcoming them into his pro-life association on the grounds that their position that OCs do not cause abortions is reasonable for three reasons: 1) They haven’t heard that OCs cause abortions, 2) They have heard the evidence that OCs cause abortions, but remain unconvinced because the evidence has not been scientifically verified, 3) Although OCs occasionally cause abortions, this effect is outweighed by the fact that the abortions caused by OCs are "most likely considerably less frequent than the accidental miscarriage rate in the population of sexually-active women who are not on oral contraceptives."

He also told me that while he justifies the position of those who prescribe OCs, he personally refuses to prescribe them. I have compiled my rebuttal of all three of his reasons for justifying the prescription and use of OCs. I have presented them to the good doctor, but to no avail. He remains incorrigible, insisting that "Some APP physicians have no strain of conscience in prescribing oral contraceptives."

The rebuttals are as follows:

1) If the physicians in question have not heard the evidence showing that OCs cause abortions, you should tell them, Doctor. Combating this misinformation should be one of the goals of your Association of Pro-Life Physicians.

2) You have stated as follows in the first paragraph of your article:

I asked former Life Advocate editor and abortion abolitionist author Paul deParrie, who has researched and published some of the evidence, to comment on the lack of direct scientific verification. "The evidence is that the process of implantation is interrupted, but it is not scientifically confirmed that it happens," said deParrie. "The Pill makers would lose money if they did the study and it was proven true. They have every reason not to do the study. No anti-abortion group has the resources to fund such a study."

Even if there is a reasonable doubt about the function of the chemicals prescribed, the suggestion from a reasonable source that an innocent human life will be terminated if a specific course of action is pursued should compel the actor to suspend that course of action until the matter is fully resolved one way or the other. The objections of physicians who prescribe OCs calling for further scientific verification show a gross error in priorities and disregard for their professional oath.

An analogy will help put things in perspective. Joe has a warehouse job crushing boxes. Joe is about to run over a box with a steamroller. Joe’s coworker Harry presents Joe with evidence that indicates a reasonable possibility that Fred might be in the box. James, Joe's superintendent, advises him to go ahead and crush the box without further investigation only if his conscience does not condemn him. What criteria must Harry's explanations meet before Joe should be persuaded not to crush the box and possibly Fred?

I would vote to convict Joe of first degree murder if he pursued his course of action with the steamroller, based on the objection that Harry had not proven Fred's presence in the box beyond a reasonable doubt. Joe’s willingness to ignore a reasonable warning shows malice aforethought. Harry’s suggestion should have compelled Joe to suspend his course of action until the question was fully resolved. James, in his professional capacity as a superintendent, should be convicted as an accessory to murder.

The "pro-life" physicians who embrace this false excuse are dealing with the guilt of the knowledge of their complicity and hypocrisy by trying to justify themselves instead of simply confessing that they may have, all along, been doing the very thing for which they held other physicians in contempt. I use the word "physicians" broadly and perhaps unjustly. Peddlers of poisons which give couples license to hump like bunnies, relieved of the cumbersome thought of childbirth and heedless of the consequences to conceived children, are hardly physicians. And you, Pope Johnston, Founder of the Association of Pro-Life Physicians and Doctor of Osteopathy and Vicar of Christ, wave your magic wand and absolve the pill pushers. These are the sorcerers which the Bible calls "pharmekia" (cf. Mal.3:5; 1 Tim.4:1; Rev. 22:15).

But I digress.

3) You posit that by preventing most conceptions, oral contraceptives prevent natural and frequent miscarriages (technically "abortions") where the conceptus would be naturally reabsorbed by a sexually active woman not on OCs. Therefore, you say, even if the OC does sometimes abort the conceptus by creating a hostile environment not conducive to implantation, you argue that the overall death rate is reduced by the function of the oral contraceptive.

Therefore you conclude that OCs, even if they occasionally prevent a life from developing that might have otherwise developed, may be justly prescribed by pro-life physicians because they decrease the overall natural abortion rate by preventing the conceptions in the first place.

Your argument, Doctor Highbrow, is vulnerable from so many different angles...it holds water like a sieve. Essentially, it weighs the life of the human being that is refused implantation by the oral contraceptive against the lives of an unknown but (you claim) probably larger number of un-conceived human beings.

Before I respond to these words of yours (for they can hardly be called a syllogism), I will present a simple analogy consistent with my response to the first argument.

If the mother is sterilized before her next sexual encounter, it will prevent all those natural abortions (and the eventual natural deaths of anyone she may have eventually given birth to) without directly killing anyone. Surely this is preferable to preventing the same deaths by killing or endangering existing innocent lives. Would you justify physicians who recommend (on this basis) sterilization for every woman? I beg you, Doctor, to show me how this does not follow directly from your reasoning. A more ambitious physician might even justify forcibly, but secretly, sterilizing the same woman before her next sexual encounter by this line of "reasoning."

This brings me directly to the reasoning. Your third argument, good Doctor, is an absurdity. A physician cannot prevent the death of something or someone who will never exist. I cannot overemphasize that this is not a logical argument. A person must exist and be alive in order to die. A pill pusher can, however, prevent the possibility of the conception of a person. And that same sorcerer can certainly be the direct cause of death by prescribing an agent which (as he has been reasonably informed) may withhold the essentials of life at a very early stage from a person already conceived (the microscopic equivalent of starving a newborn to death).

Given, his proposed association doesn’t have a public membership roster, and by all appearances is still in the earliest stages of development, with only a website (prolifephysicians.org) as a testament to its existence; yet considering the current deranged state of the "pro-life movement," I predict that it will grow exponentially and swell in membership and influence in proportion to the good Doctor's head.