'Washington Post' Columnist Outlines What We Don't Know About Reproduction

The abortion laws working their way through state legislatures deal with complicated issues surrounding conception and pregnancy. And in The Washington Post, columnist Monica Hesse has a piece titled "What We Don't Know About How A Uterus Works Is Going To Hurt Us All." She describes, quote, "the squeamish cloak of secrecy and ignorance that shrouds all things ovarian." And she argues that misunderstandings about reproduction and pregnant bodies can get in the way of honest debate.

Monica Hesse, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

MONICA HESSE: Thank you so much for having me.

SHAPIRO: You start your piece with an anecdote from when you were pregnant last year. Tell us what happened.

HESSE: Sure. I was trying to schedule a sonogram. And when I called the doctor's office, the nurse was not interested in the dates that I thought would be important, like the date of conception. She was interested only in the first date of my last period because it turns out, this is how pregnancy is calculated. It's based on the first day of a person's last period, which means that by the time you think you're two weeks pregnant, the medical community would consider you to already be, say, four weeks pregnant. And this was a distinction that I didn't know and I think a lot of people don't know unless they're pregnant themselves and in that situation.