In this concern, we report on the science of being pregnant biology and the way it has been misunderstood or misapplied in insurance policies and legal guidelines regulating abortion. We posted the article on our web site on June 24, the day the U.S. Supreme Court dominated that the best to an abortion just isn’t protected by the Constitution.
Covering some of the consequential and controversial rulings within the courtroom’s historical past could appear off matter for a science journal. But Science News has lined politically and ethically contentious points since our founding in 1921. Our founders, zoologist William E. Ritter and newspaper magnate E.W. Scripps, thought it important that Americans have correct details about science in order that they’ll perceive the world round them and be told residents.
We have stayed true to that mission over the many years, reporting on science to tell public debate on a variety of points together with abortion, racism, nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, HIV/AIDS, poverty, air pollution, gun violence and local weather change. We have additionally defined the place science has been manipulated or misapplied within the service of political agendas. And we’ve lined the rise of antiscience misinformation and disinformation on topics together with local weather change, vaccines and the pandemic (SN: 5/8/21 & 5/22/21, p. 22).
Looking particularly at abortion, Science News has lined the topic persistently, together with a 1937 examine in JAMA that discovered abortion to be frequent amongst married ladies in New York City who use contraception, with 1 in 8 such ladies saying that they had had no less than one induced abortion (SN: 5/29/37, p. 349). We have additionally lined advances in understanding the fundamental biology of human replica, and analysis on public well being and the social impacts of entry to abortion and contraception. We will proceed to cowl these points because the United States enters a brand new period of restrictions or bans on abortion and maybe contraception.
With science more and more below risk, we imagine much more strongly within the significance of our founding mission and can proceed to offer correct protection of science and its position in society.