Last summer Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon prompts a social research question that, I think, is critical in the debate over contraception, abortion, and, especially “Plan B” style emergency contraception.
Two questions, really:
The first is actually biological: How long after penis-in-vagina intercourse does it take for ejaculated sperm to reach and egg, enter it, combine genes to form the complete new full set of human chromosomes required to be considered a complete, unique single cell genetically distinct from either donor sperm or donor egg?
The second is social, and in a lot of ways, far more important: How long do people think it takes? Especially people who oppose contraception and, particularly, emergency contraception?
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The best available answer for the first question, taking into consideration the time required for capacitationin the sperm in the woman’s reproductive tract, sperm/zona-pellucida binding once sperm finds egg, penetration/migration through the zona pellucida, sperm/oocite binding, acrosome reaction is “a minimum of 24 hours assuming an egg is already available and viable and all other conditions are surpremely ideal.” (And it’s worth mentioning the evidence that intercourse stimulates ovulation, with the result that fertilization often takes as long as five days, which, perhaps not coincidentally, is how long after intercourse emergency contraception may still be effective.)
The best available answer for the second question… isn’t, as far as I know, nobody knows!
But!
The controversy generated by anti-choice/anti-sex activists over contraception in general, and emergency contraception in particular, suggests a widely-held belief that fertilization happens mere moments after ejaculation. I happen to think it has something to do with our agricultural metaphors for heterosexuality — man as farmer (the original meaning of “husband,” by the way), intercourse as “plowing,” semen or sperm as “seed,” women as “fertile,” and so on.
Source: Minnesota Historical Society
So!
So? So first of all, if you have more accurate answers for question one or, more importantly, question two please let me know either in comments, in email, or if you’re a blogger in your own post.
And second of all, if you’re involved in sex-related social research, have access to polling resources, or are otherwise in a position to gather answers to question #2 I’d really, really appreciate further investigation and, especially, publication of the results.
And finally, if you’re writing or speaking professionally in the fields of sex education or sex-ed curriculum development I think it would be very helpful to have the insemnation/conception lag explained as simply, and frequently as possible.
I think the result would be a wider understanding of the remarkable-when-you-think-about-it time difference. And I think the benefit would be more reassurance for waverers in debates about contraception in general, and emergency contraception in particular.
Submitted by 1576 (not verified) on Mon, 2007-10-15 12:32.
Surely, surely, surely people know that it can take days for conception to take place? I've always known so the knowledge obviously dates from the beginning of time.
I will admit there is an alarming lack of understanding about all sorts of issues as far as human reproduction is concerned, but the ones who are most likely to oppose EC seem (and this may be a sweeping generalisation) to be people who go in for natural methods of contraception. Natural methods of contraception and indeed conception, use the timing of the viability of egg and sperm to function. Some (unreliable) methods of sex selction use it too.
The answer to #2 among teenagers may be a good question. I suspect it isn't often mentioned in sex education because it really isn't a reliable method of contraception and may lead to a false sense of security.
[I think there's some vague notion that it happens "sometime" after ejaculation because the sperm have to "work their way" in. But even that's available only to people who actually *get* what passes for sex education these days. And it's not necessarily that knowing the truth would alter anyone's position. As with too many other things, "you stick it you own it" where "ejaculation" and "conception" amount to the same thing. But even if finding out just meant getting that show of hands, knowing how they are would probably help clarify the context of the debate. Thanks, A. --fl]
Submitted by 1576 (not verified) on Tue, 2007-10-16 10:24.
Well, speaking for the diverse and vast young adult population I work for, until you give them any other information, pretty much everyone has always appeared to think that conception is absolutely instantaneous. This is part of why we see so many people trying to use guestimates of ovulation times even more poorly than they would be because they don't realize a) how long conception takes and b) how long sperm can remain viable within the vagina and uterus.
And we explain this stuff ALL the time -- as many comprehensive sex ed programs do, all the more so since the advent of EC -- but there are a LOT of pervasive messages out there which continue to state or imply that it IS instant -- both due to ignorance and to political agendas -- so it's a constant uphill batle.
[Good point about EC being a good lever to base the explanation on (acknowledging, of course, that conservative assertions of instantaneous "conception" has a lot to do with their knee-jerk oppostion to EC... and, more generally, to contraception at all.) Thanks, Heather. --fl]
Submitted by 1576 (not verified) on Mon, 2007-10-15 09:43.
Nothing to add except well said! How often is it that absolutist positions on any issue have at their heart either lack of information or mis-information or worst of all downright lies?
[Thank you, LR. --fl]
Submitted by 1576 (not verified) on Tue, 2007-10-16 14:36.
Surely, surely, surely people know that it can take days for conception to take place? I've always known so the knowledge obviously dates from the beginning of time.
Unfortunately, A in France, here in the US we spend more time fueling moral outrage about conception rather than increasing our understanding of the physiological process of conception.
Many Catholics who are opposed to birth control and abortion base their arguments on the premise that to interfere with conception we are interfering with Nature, and to the theologians of the Church who predated Martin Luther, God and Nature were inseparable. This premise is false, IMO, because the history of human civilization is one of interfering with nature: agriculture, the domestication of animals, the study of the laws of physics and geometry to construct buildings, etc.
Sounds logical but logic has not prevented certain pharmacists from refusing to dispense birth control prescriptions.