“abortifacient” drugs and the unintended consequences of Orwellian language

Do Plan B, Ella, and IUDs cause abortions at least part of the time?

For years, the answer, according to the “experts,” was “no” based on their re-definition that a pregnancy is established at the time of successful implantation, and that any drug or device which prevents conception or implantation is defined as contraception.  Their repeated response to those who believed that it’s wrong to deliberately prevent the implantation process because the fertilized egg/embryo is already a human life?  “You fool, we have defined away this issue.  Go away.”

We still see this, over and over again, in the reaction to the Hobby Lobby case.  I’m not now going to link, but it’s all over the place:  “Hobby Lobby is stupid to think that these are abortion drugs because they don’t affect established pregnancies.”

Now, if you look a little closer, scientists are actually changing their story, and saying that Plan B, Ella, and IUDs (as well as garden-variety contraceptive pills, which had long been a concern for this reason as well for some pro-life groups) do not interfere with implantation at all.

Here’s one example, from the New York Times, “Religious Groups Equate Some Contraceptives With Abortion” — this is an older article from a google search but here’s the key quote:

Several scientists and doctors said in interviews that this view [that these contraceptives prevent implantation] did not reflect the way the birth control methods actually work. “There’s so much evidence for how these things work prior to fertilization,” said Diana L. Blithe, director of contraceptive development for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. “And there’s no evidence that they work beyond fertilization.”

Do you buy this?  Or, when Blithe says, “there’s no evidence,” is there a certain degree of “we’re not trying very hard to find any evidence anyway, because we don’t care”?

There are people for whom it matters a great deal whether these contraceptives have an anti-implantation effect.  And these people have been ridiculed, so that now, so far as I can tell, when scientists could step in and change the debate, their prior use of Orwellian language has meant that they don’t have credibility with the objects of their ridicule.