Pearl Gets A Biology Lesson On Human Reproduction
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
171.1126
Summary
In this episode, we talk about pregnancy and birth control, and the controversial topic of whether or not fertilisation is possible in the early stages of pregnancy. We also discuss the benefits and drawbacks of different types of birth control and how they can affect the success of a pregnancy.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Oh, the copper IUD, you said you know for a fact that one works after.
00:00:08.700
So the reason we know that is when you have a pregnancy that implants into the uterus,
00:00:15.120
it releases beta-HCG, human chorionic gonadotropin,
00:00:19.820
which basically is what you get in pregnancy tests.
00:00:22.280
So when you take a pregnancy test, either a urine or a blood one,
00:00:25.200
it will measure this hormone that is released around the time of implantation.
00:00:30.900
What they have found is that for many women who use the copper coil,
00:00:35.120
they get this hormone released from their body.
00:00:40.280
And so that suggests that the implantation has occurred or at least is occurring,
00:00:45.640
which means that fertilization must have happened.
00:01:10.480
they will meet, you know, typically in the fallopian tube,
00:01:12.980
and then it will roll down as a zygote or embryo
00:01:18.560
and then it will implant into the wall of the uterus
00:01:21.300
where it can begin to grow and develop as a baby.
00:01:30.320
isn't it like a lot of times it wouldn't make it there anyway?
00:01:37.600
yeah, it's quite common that the embryo fails to implant.
00:01:41.920
Now, some people say that shows that it's not a human being,
00:01:46.660
then it would implant and you would get a, you know, a baby growing.
00:01:51.040
I don't think this is convincing because, you know,
00:01:54.320
would you say the same about a six-month-old child
00:01:57.880
in a country where most six-month-old children die?
00:02:01.420
In many parts of human history or parts of the world,
00:02:13.300
So the same might well be true with the very early embryo,
00:02:18.640
but that says nothing about whether it's alive.
00:02:20.840
What percent of embryos make it to implementation, like, normally?
00:02:34.260
I think it was about half, but there's a big margin of error.
00:02:40.040
Half is higher than they really painted it out to be
00:02:54.860
90% of early embryos don't make it into, you know,
00:03:03.240
Pregnancy is more successful than we used to think.
00:03:16.740
we think, usually, which you can take after having sex.
00:03:21.040
And the idea behind it is that normally it would work.
00:03:39.340
and the way that it's supposed to work normally
00:03:44.240
So that's where the egg is released into the fallopian tube,
00:03:50.400
So if you block ovulation, there is no egg in the tube,
00:03:54.400
and therefore the sperm can't react with anything
00:04:02.160
And because sometimes the egg has already been released,
00:04:18.320
Plan B shouldn't work because the egg's already there,
00:04:23.200
Now, as I said, there's some people who think that it has other mechanisms,
00:04:33.340
the endometrium, to thin out and be less hospitable.
00:04:39.920
We, as I said earlier, we just don't really know for sure if that happens.
00:04:45.200
We're pretty sure that it blocks, that it thins the lining of the endometrium
00:04:49.180
and blocks it, but we don't know if it ever actually uses that mechanism.
00:04:53.940
So some people think it does, and they're like,
00:05:04.220
so I was thinking something when you were talking earlier.
00:05:07.060
You're saying women have all these negative effects from abortion.
00:05:20.680
but my question is if there's all these negative effects,
00:05:25.960
And what I've found is like a lot of women that aren't really sad,
00:05:30.220
or I can think of one girl that was sad and remorseful about it,
00:05:45.820
So I think there's a big question with a lot of potential answers,
00:05:51.100
So we know that there's a big cultural difference in this.
00:05:57.340
in Romania 50 years ago, the average woman had eight abortions.
00:06:08.800
They didn't really have much other contraception.
00:06:12.680
And this was before ultrasounds were widely available,
00:06:16.840
So, you know, there was a lot less knowledge about what is inside and how much it had developed.
00:06:24.920
But all that to say, the culture and the knowledge of people makes a big difference.
00:06:29.920
I think part of it is that people will suppress some of their, you know, their feelings of guilt or sadness.
00:06:41.640
Not everyone, you know, some people genuinely, I agree, don't feel any negative things from it.
00:06:46.320
But I think, you know, the evidence we have from New Zealand, which is a fairly liberal country,
00:06:51.520
suggests that the majority do feel grief, guilt, sorrow, etc.
00:07:01.300
So, you know, there's still a big chunk of women, a third of women, who don't feel those things.
00:07:04.720
Maybe those are the ones that's like the opposite data, like 40 percent that just keep doing it over and over again.
00:07:14.560
I think another part is that people often don't realise what has caused their mental health difficulties.
00:07:22.080
So I think this is a big problem in Western society generally, right?
00:07:25.200
Like a huge proportion of young people especially have mental health difficulties.
00:07:34.520
And because there's such a medicalisation of mental health now,
00:07:39.080
there's a real lack of willingness to attribute it to circumstances.
00:07:45.000
They think, oh, I have a mental health problem.
00:07:49.320
And it's just seen as like a random thing that happened that you get medication for.
00:07:55.080
For many people with mental health problems, medication is the right treatment.
00:08:01.140
But all that to say, there's a real lack of willingness by the medical profession as well
00:08:07.340
to engage with why did these problems happen in the first place?
00:08:11.600
Could it be due to unhealthy habits, loneliness, lack of community, lack of religion, we know plays a big part,
00:08:20.960
And so you will get a lot of people out there who will have mental health difficulties that were caused
00:08:27.780
or at least made more likely by an abortion, but they would never tie the two together.
00:08:33.780
Part of the reason for that is because for most mental health problems,
00:08:42.020
Now, the exception here is post-traumatic stress disorder
00:08:44.940
because with post-traumatic stress disorder, the symptoms are specific to a trauma.
00:08:49.640
So, you know, if you have a car crash, you might get flashbacks to the car crash.
00:08:54.540
If you had a trauma in a particular place, you might avoid going to that place.
00:08:59.680
And therefore, you can tell usually what has caused post-traumatic stress disorder.
00:09:05.720
And we know that about, it's a bit of a broad range,
00:09:10.060
but between 1.5% and 14% of women who have abortions get PTSD as a result.
00:09:22.920
I mean, when you look at standard complications for surgery or for any medical treatment,
00:09:34.580
So we know that PTSD is a common or a very common consequence of abortion.
00:09:41.960
in America there's, we said, a million abortions a year, just a little bit less.
00:09:45.260
That means that there's somewhere between, like, 14,000 and 140,000 women having PTSD every single year from abortion.