What are we fighting for?

I might have thought that losing my pregnancy would turn me against stem cell research. But it had the opposite effect.

By Lisa Moricoli Latham

Sept. 5, 2001 | The beginning of human life is under scrutiny as never before. Late-reproducing baby boomers have pushed reproductive science toward more and more intensely technological end runs around ever more minute problems on the way toward the holy grail of fertilization (with the result that fertility specialists measure their success rates in positive pregnancies, not healthy babies). At the same time, even us Gen-Xers who can still try to make babies the old-fashioned way are testing earlier and earlier for pregnancy, becoming more and more invested in life beginning as soon as we see two pink lines on those plastic sticks.

Small wonder then, that the rhetoric of the stem cell debate is a far cry from the pro-choice "viability" arguments we grew up on -- and small wonder that the stem cell debate presents the dilemma of whether the earliest result of a sperm and an egg united inside the womb is more or less a "person" than those united in a petri dish.

Having just scrutinized a pregnancy that ended at the point when most stem cells are collected, I've decided to push away the microscope to look at the problem as a mother. I might have assumed that losing a very early pregnancy would have made me an opponent of stem cell research. Surprisingly, it had the opposite effect.

Some embryologists argue that an individual's life begins about 14 days after fertilization, as the possibiity of separation into a pair of twins disappears. Others see life as a process, unfolding as the egg and sperm (already both living things) join and gain complexity over a longer period. Then there are those, like William Calvin, president of the anti-abortion group LifeNet Inc., who call leftover fertilized eggs created for in-vitro fertilization "children who have been living to this point as frozen embryos."

Many women these days refer to their loss of very early pregnancies as "having a child in heaven." The first time I saw this term was on an electronic bulletin board for women trying to conceive. I had tapped into the board as I began to worry that I was in the process of losing my own pregnancy, but it was too soon to tell.

The greatest hormonal changes occur early in a pregnancy, then reverse rapidly once a pregnancy ends, so as my body pulled its second 180 that afternoon in front of the computer, I empathized with my sisters on the bulletin board. Awash in hormones and emotions, I understood the desire to dramatize the surge of biochemicals that had crashed over me going in one direction, only to riptide back a couple of weeks later.

My husband and I had tried for months to conceive, so that afternoon, not knowing whether I was just "spotting," or losing the pregnancy altogether, I read the board messages with my three positive home pregnancy test sticks lined up in front of my monitor. It was as if I had to prove to myself I hadn't imagined the whole episode, like the women whose phantom pregnancies turn out to be bad gas.

After a few hours of bleeding, as well as three, unquestionably negative home pregnancy tests, my obstetrician explained that what I had experienced was not even considered a miscarriage, but just a "chemical pregnancy." Oddly, this new phrase was more comforting than dismissive.

Doctors now rely on the new term "chemical pregnancy" for very early pregnancy loss because pregnancies are being detected earlier and earlier -- both due to infertility treatments and the availability of sophisticated over-the-counter ovulation and pregnancy tests. For as little as $1.50, a woman can now purchase the same tests that doctors use to know for certain if the egg and sperm united and have implanted in the uterus. After implantation, the uterus emits human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), pregnancy's first chemical symptom. In the past, even doctors' pregnancy tests were limited to detecting 100 units of hCG and thus worked only after the fourth or fifth week after fertilization. New tests can detect 15 or 20 units, making it possible for a woman to detect pregnancy as early as a week post-fertilization -- a full week before she misses a period.

Next page: I logged onto the women's bulletin board, bleeding and cramping