Last week, The New Yorker published an essay that confused many readers. Apoorva Tadepalli wrote that pregnancy tests create a “misleading, somewhat arbitrary, binary” between pregnant and not pregnant. She claimed a woman can be “kind of pregnant” or “almost pregnant.” That was the plan.
Readers and medical experts quickly pushed back against the idea. The magazine suggested a living human could be in a woman’s body while she is technically “not pregnant.” This view clashes with standard medical definitions. It also contradicts federal rules that have been in place for decades.
The essay, titled “The Unsettling Ambiguity of Early Pregnancy,” argues that pregnancy only starts when a fertilized egg attaches to the uterus, according to the Daily Wire. Tadepalli wrote, “You can be kind of pregnant, a little bit pregnant, almost pregnant, or maybe pregnant,” she says, “and still test positive.” The piece treats this attachment, called implantation, as the true start of pregnancy.
However, medical science defines the beginning of life differently. Bruce Carlson, a human embryologist cited in a standard medical-school textbook, states that “Human pregnancy begins with the fusion of an egg and a sperm. This moment creates a new human being with a unique genome. It is not a “potential” life or a “maybe life. It is a whole, living organism.
The New Yorker did not invent this confusing definition. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists changed the rules back in 1965. Their Terminology Bulletin No. 1 redefined “conception” as “the implantation of a fertilized ovum.” By 1972, the college was even blunter. They stated that conception “is not synonymous with fertilization,” and linked the word to implantation instead.
This was a change in the dictionary, not a new discovery in a lab. The gap between fertilization and implantation lasts about a week. While this occurs, the human being moves from the fallopian tube to the uterus. Implantation is just a change of location. It is not the origin of that human life. The result is a living human being that does not count in some regulations.
There is a clear difference between fertilization and later milestones. Fertilization answers the question of when a new human being arrives. Implantation does not. Pregnancy means a new human being exists, not merely a being generating sufficient hormone for a drugstore test.
The New Yorker’s essay suggests a difference of only a few days matters more than the creation of life itself. A difference of only a few days exists between the time of fertilization and the time of implantation, which they argue we ought to consider “with. But you cannot be “a little bit pregnant.” A new human being is either present or it is not. The science is clear, even if the magazine tries to blur the line.
