The Global Biopolitics of the IUD: How Science Constructs Contraceptive Users and Women's Bodies

4. “IUDs Are Not Abortifacients”: The Biopolitics of Contraceptive Mechanisms

4 “IUDs Are Not Abortifacients”: The Biopolitics of Contraceptive Mechanisms Most scientific papers have agreed that in as many as 95 percent of the cases [the IUD] does not prevent fertilization. What it does do is prevent the implantation, at one week of life, of the tiny new human into the nutrient lining of the mother’s womb. Because with that in place, this little boy or girl cannot implant, he or she dies and passes from the mother’s body. So, even though your doctor may call an IUD a contraceptive, remember, it does not prevent fertilization. It does cause the death of the tiny new human at one week of life in a micro-abortion, and for this reason, few Christian women will allow one to be inserted into them. —John Willke, M.D., Life Issues Institute The characterization of the IUD as an abortifacient is a rhetorical move that has been advanced by antiabortion movement leaders and religiously inclined physicians. Discrediting contraceptive methods has been integral to the conservative political agenda in the United States, which gained a foothold with the New Right’s rise to power during the 1980s. In the opening quote to this chapter, John Willke, a significant figure in the antiabortion movement, denounces the IUD mechanism of action in his role as the in-house medical specialist on the Life Issues Institute Web site.1 He depicts the IUD as an object that causes a “micro-abortion” by preventing implantation, that is, the attachment of the fertilized egg to the maternal uterine wall. Scientists who have long been involved in IUD development disagree with his description. They explain that the IUD exerts its antifertility effect primarily by preventing fertilization and maintain that the device indisputably is a contraceptive method. This controversy about abortion has been a source of dilemma for IUD developers since the early 1960s when they sought to revitalize the contraceptive method as a population control tool. Despite years of scientific research, the exact biological reactions induced by the device have 106 Chapter 4 never been identified. Over the years, developers have been especially careful to interpret and present the IUD’s mechanism of action in a socially acceptable manner. The uncertainty of its functions, however, has given antiabortionists an opportunity to challenge the legitimacy of this contraceptive method. The dispute over the representation of the IUD’s mechanism of action—Is it an antifertilization or an anti-implantation method?—is one of the battles that pro-contraceptive groups are forced to fight in the antichoice war waged by the religious and political Right. Although this debate has not been settled, IUD supporters’ struggle to validate the antifertilization hypothesis has positioned them in a closer alliance with feminists who advocate broader access to reproductive health care and fertility control methods. Historical investigation of the representations of the IUD’s mechanism of action reveals how conflicts and coalitions among divergent reproductive politics have shaped the scientific debate and contributed to the construction of a heterogeneous technological object. This chapter traces the discourse of the IUD’s mechanism of action from the 1960s to the present. First, I examine how developers of the device reconciled the method as a contraceptive and how they responded to pressures from the antiabortion camp over the years. Second, I situate the scientific debate within the broader political struggle and analyze the discursive construction of the IUD as an abortifacient. I argue that the perception that the device is an abortifacient is coconstructed with a representation of the “religious woman” and a patriarchal mode of governance over women’s bodies. Finally, I elaborate how the war on choice has solidified a feminist/neo-Malthusian alliance and the support behind the notion of the IUD as a contraceptive choice. On the whole, this chapter shows how contesting views on the mechanism of the IUD were built in relationship to each other. The IUD as Contraceptive Eluding the Abortion Question: The 1960s to the 1970s We begin in the 1960s, a time of both optimism and uncertainty surrounding the acceptability of the IUD’s mechanism of action among the device’s advocates. During the first international conference on the IUD hosted by the Population Council in 1962, Mary Calderone, a former medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, posed a crucial question: “IUDs Are Not Abortifacients” 107 “What is an abortion?” She proceeded to offer her...