PERRYBLOG: From Beauprez' pulpit to your uterus, can he fight science and win your vote?

Few things make the eyes roll of most people like when you tell them that some very sick little boy might die because his Jehovah’s Witness parents won’t let him have a blood transfusion.

It’s crazy crap, I know. But for decades, that “mainstream” religion has garnered international attention because church leaders believe God says through the Bible that eating blood or having it pumped into your body is about as bad as things can get. They believe it’s better to die, or let their children die, than violate a mandate from God.

Courts have been known to regularly intervene in cases where this blood nonsense is imposed on children, who are at their scary parents’ mercy. But if you’re over 18 and choose to die refusing a transfusion when it could have easily saved your life? Hey, it’s a free country, and we have respect for what crazy things people do in the name of religion, because it’s their religion.

Now most of us agree that God never intended for someone to refuse a blood transfusion — even those like me, who unashamedly admit that while I am always fascinated by every world religion, I subscribe to none of them. It’s easy for people to roll their eyes at the blood-haters, because the science is so easy to understand. If you lose too much blood, you die. If you pump some back in, you don’t die. Pumping blood from a donor into your veins is not the same as clubbing them, cutting out their heart and eating it. Most of us sneer at others who just don’t understand the truth behind the logic and the science.

So are you sneering at Colorado gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez’ backwoods science prowess?

Beauprez embarrassed himself and plenty of other fellow Catholics this week when he said that inter-uterine devices used as birth control, in essence, cause abortions.

Are your eyes rolling yet? No? Here’s the thing. Scientists agree that about two-thirds of fertilized human eggs never implant in a woman’s uterus, or they don’t grow into pregnancies. Although fertilized, these eggs could never become babies. An IUD works, in essence, because it “tricks” a woman’s body into thinking that it already has an implanted pregnancy underway, so no new fertilized eggs are able to “park” in the uterus. Some IUDs also work to prevent fertilization.  It’s relatively simple and, almost all physicians agree, incredibly safe and effective. This is an oversimplification, if you want to talk gametes and blastocysts, it’s going to get ugly, but much more persuasive. Scientists agree that when it comes to making babies, human bodies are pretty inefficient, which is why birth controls such as IUDs are so effective.

Beauprez’ mistaken philosophy comes from getting his science from church and not from scientists. To those who understand the biology of human reproduction, Beauprez’ statements are as ludicrous as those explaining why they would be willing to let their children die for want of a blood transfusion.

Even if you get it that there could be a moral objection to terminating a viable pregnancy, fertilized human eggs are not pregnancies, fetuses or babies. IUDs do not abort pregnancies.

The only reason we should care about Beauprez’ flunking science grades is because he’s not alone in thinking other people’s crazy science stuff is bad, but that his crazy science stuff is OK. If the junk science club gets a majority of votes in the Colorado House and Senate to outlaw the use of IUDs here in the state? Well the last line of defense would be the governor’s office.

This is where it’s not just weird and eye-rolling anymore. What would he do? Beauprez has made it clear that his religion is a big, big part of his personal and political life. He’s not an unintelligent or uneducated man by any means, but if he chooses religious science over real science when it comes to birth control, what other science or facts does someone like that set aside when religious convictions are at stake, or any convictions?

The next few days will help answer those questions. If Beauprez backs off his mistake, and says he has been set straight, that speaks mountains about the kind of leader he is. But if he digs in, backing himself into a corner, defends his faux science like a Jehovah’s Witness explaining the bad science behind blood transfusions, he has to admit that he would let this erroneous and potentially dangerous religious belief hold sway in his life, and possibly yours.

I guess this is where biblical things like living by the sword and dying by the sword make a lot of sense. But those things are just metaphors, and this, this is real life.

—Editor Dave Perry