Dr. Lin-Fan Wang: "The Danger of Giving Science and Religion Equal Weight on Birth Control Cases."
[Efforts to spread misinformation about birth control methods have] gone into overdrive as the Supreme Court prepares to hear legal arguments from Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties, two for-profit corporations that want to interfere with their female employees' personal decisions about birth control. Specifically, the owners of these corporations object to providing insurance coverage for emergency contraceptive pills and IUDs.Read the whole thing here.
As deeply troubling as I find the companies' efforts, I am even more disturbed by the ways in which the media is complicit in their efforts by misleading their audiences.
The news coverage of the birth control benefit has been riddled with inaccurate statements, in particular, the allegations that the law requires coverage of abortifacients (medicine that causes abortion) or that the science is unclear on whether the FDA-approved contraceptives are abortifacients. Neither of these statements is true from a medical or scientific viewpoint and no matter how many times they're repeated in the media's misguided efforts to present multiple sides of an argument. What would be best for readers: the media should adhere to the facts. Some readers are interested in opinions on the facts, but opinions and facts are not the same.
...I do not question the religious beliefs of those who disagree with the contraceptive coverage requirement. However, the media should not report their beliefs as medical facts. Suggesting otherwise or claiming that there is "unsettled science" about how contraception works is false.
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