The Details:

In the New Yorker, Tadepalli wrote of the supposed problems with pregnancy being diagnosed early, due to what she described as "binary" pregnancy tests, as early pregnancy seemingly does not count for Tadepalli.

"What I did not understand the first time I tested positive was that pregnancy tests draw a misleading, somewhat arbitrary, binary between a state of pregnant and not pregnant," she wrote. "You can be kind of pregnant, a little bit pregnant, almost pregnant, or maybe pregnant, and still test positive for pregnancy."

As 'proof,' Tadepalli pointed to pregnancy complications like chemical or ectopic pregnancies.

"You might test positive if you’re going to have a miscarriage in a week, if you’re currently miscarrying, if you had a miscarriage a week ago, or if you have a fetus inside you that’s dead but not coming out," she said.

While Tadepalli is correct that a woman could test positive in all of these circumstances, none of these change the fact that the woman was still, at one point, pregnant.

An early miscarriage does not mean the preborn baby did not exist, just as the death of a born individual does not mean the person did not exist.

Even more bizarre was her description of what pregnancy tests do; according to Tadepalli, they "capture a moment in time at which an embryo has implanted and is interacting with the uterus in some way."

Tadepalli's mindset has seemingly been shaped by multiple pregnancy losses. She appears to have refused to acknowledge that she was actually pregnant until very close to her due date (emphases added):

This is fairly late in a pregnancy, but I have not felt pregnant for very long at all.

It was only very recently that I began thinking that I would probably actually have this baby. For most of this year, I wasn’t pregnant; I had not yet miscarried. I was pregnant for now, but who knows?

After being pregnant so many times, what does that even mean? (Once, my friend, an ob-gyn, was trying to explain my chemical pregnancy to me, and I asked her, dryly, if it would be helpful to think of myself as definitely pregnant only after I had given birth.)

Time moves differently when you are pregnant after multiple early losses. With every day, your odds of delivering a healthy baby get a little better, but new questions and uncertainties arise constantly that make you feel like you’re moving backward.

While it is understandable to have hesitancy or difficulty bonding with a preborn baby due to a fear of another miscarriage, this has no bearing on whether a person is or is not pregnant.

Zoom In:

Reaction to Tadepalli's article was swift.

"So, you're only pregnant if you 'feel' pregnant or like you will 'probably actually have this baby?'" Ericka Anderson wrote on X. "What *is* this article?"

Contend Projects opined that the article's ideas are part of an ongoing effort to call into question the meaning of when life — and pregnancy — begins:

This is not new. The New Yorker is recycling what abortion advocates have sold for 50+ years: that a woman can be “almost pregnant.” It worked before. That is why so many people today think pregnancy begins at implantation. They are doing it again.

For example, in October 1964, at the Population Council’s Second International Conference on Intra-Uterine Contraception in New York, the problem was the IUD. If it acted after fertilization, it might be labeled abortifacient.

Conference chairman Dr. Howard C. Taylor Jr. said the fix out loud: “It has been suggested that we ought to set our definition that pregnancies start at implantation.” Implantation—versus fertilization—when a human life actually begins.

ACOG did it in 1965, and just like that, a woman was magically “almost pregnant” between fertilization and implantation. Not science. A fraudulent redefinition so the industry could keep the word “contraception.”

A woman is pregnant when a new human being begins to exist. There is still no such thing as being “almost pregnant.”

Kristan Hawkins, presidents of Students for Life of America, responded with a video on Instagram:

Isabel Brown likewise reacted on Facebook:

Reality Check:

From all scientific standards, there is no denying when a new human life begins: fertilization.

In "Human Life and Health Care Ethics, Vol. 2," James Bopp discussed this first moment of a new life:

The first cell of a new and unique human life begins existence at the moment of conception (fertilization) when one living sperm from the father joins with one living ovum from the mother. It is in this manner that human life passes from one generation to another.

Professors Keith Moore, TVN Persaud, and Mark Torchia wrote in "The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology" that life begins at the moment of fertilization, saying, "Human development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, the zygote.”

The Endowment for Human Development, a nonpartisan scientific non-profit group, released a documentary about the development of human beings inside the womb. Of fertilization, EHD states:

The two cells gradually and gracefully become one. This is the moment of conception, when an individual’s unique set of DNA is created, a human signature that never existed before and will never be repeated.

Medical experts and medical textbooks agree that a new human life exists at that first moment of fertilization.

The Bottom Line:

The living, growing human being who has been newly conceived is alive, even if that human fails to survive to birth and beyond. But death does not erase existence altogether, and even if pregnancy only lasts for a short time, it still happened... even if this reality causes grief due to loss.

"What I did not understand the first time I tested positive was that pregnancy tests draw a misleading, somewhat arbitrary, binary between a state of pregnant and not pregnant," she wrote. "You can be kind of pregnant, a little bit pregnant, almost pregnant, or maybe pregnant, and still test positive for pregnancy."

As 'proof,' Tadepalli pointed to pregnancy complications like chemical or ectopic pregnancies.

"You might test positive if you’re going to have a miscarriage in a week, if you’re currently miscarrying, if you had a miscarriage a week ago, or if you have a fetus inside you that’s dead but not coming out," she said.

While Tadepalli is correct that a woman could test positive in all of these circumstances, none of these change the fact that the woman was still, at one point, pregnant.

An early miscarriage does not mean the preborn baby did not exist, just as the death of a born individual does not mean the person did not exist.

Even more bizarre was her description of what pregnancy tests do; according to Tadepalli, they "capture a moment in time at which an embryo has implanted and is interacting with the uterus in some way."

Tadepalli's mindset has seemingly been shaped by multiple pregnancy losses. She appears to have refused to acknowledge that she was actually pregnant until very close to her due date (emphases added):

This is fairly late in a pregnancy, but I have not felt pregnant for very long at all.

It was only very recently that I began thinking that I would probably actually have this baby. For most of this year, I wasn’t pregnant; I had not yet miscarried. I was pregnant for now, but who knows?

After being pregnant so many times, what does that even mean? (Once, my friend, an ob-gyn, was trying to explain my chemical pregnancy to me, and I asked her, dryly, if it would be helpful to think of myself as definitely pregnant only after I had given birth.)

Time moves differently when you are pregnant after multiple early losses. With every day, your odds of delivering a healthy baby get a little better, but new questions and uncertainties arise constantly that make you feel like you’re moving backward.

While it is understandable to have hesitancy or difficulty bonding with a preborn baby due to a fear of another miscarriage, this has no bearing on whether a person is or is not pregnant.

Zoom In:

Reaction to Tadepalli's article was swift.

"So, you're only pregnant if you 'feel' pregnant or like you will 'probably actually have this baby?'" Ericka Anderson wrote on X. "What *is* this article?"

Contend Projects opined that the article's ideas are part of an ongoing effort to call into question the meaning of when life — and pregnancy — begins:

This is not new. The New Yorker is recycling what abortion advocates have sold for 50+ years: that a woman can be “almost pregnant.” It worked before. That is why so many people today think pregnancy begins at implantation. They are doing it again.

For example, in October 1964, at the Population Council’s Second International Conference on Intra-Uterine Contraception in New York, the problem was the IUD. If it acted after fertilization, it might be labeled abortifacient.

Conference chairman Dr. Howard C. Taylor Jr. said the fix out loud: “It has been suggested that we ought to set our definition that pregnancies start at implantation.” Implantation—versus fertilization—when a human life actually begins.

ACOG did it in 1965, and just like that, a woman was magically “almost pregnant” between fertilization and implantation. Not science. A fraudulent redefinition so the industry could keep the word “contraception.”

A woman is pregnant when a new human being begins to exist. There is still no such thing as being “almost pregnant.”

Kristan Hawkins, presidents of Students for Life of America, responded with a video on Instagram:

Isabel Brown likewise reacted on Facebook:

Reality Check:

From all scientific standards, there is no denying when a new human life begins: fertilization.

In "Human Life and Health Care Ethics, Vol. 2," James Bopp discussed this first moment of a new life:

The first cell of a new and unique human life begins existence at the moment of conception (fertilization) when one living sperm from the father joins with one living ovum from the mother. It is in this manner that human life passes from one generation to another.

Professors Keith Moore, TVN Persaud, and Mark Torchia wrote in "The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology" that life begins at the moment of fertilization, saying, "Human development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, the zygote.”

The Endowment for Human Development, a nonpartisan scientific non-profit group, released a documentary about the development of human beings inside the womb. Of fertilization, EHD states:

The two cells gradually and gracefully become one. This is the moment of conception, when an individual’s unique set of DNA is created, a human signature that never existed before and will never be repeated.

Medical experts and medical textbooks agree that a new human life exists at that first moment of fertilization.

The Bottom Line:

The living, growing human being who has been newly conceived is alive, even if that human fails to survive to birth and beyond. But death does not erase existence altogether, and even if pregnancy only lasts for a short time, it still happened... even if this reality causes grief due to loss.