The New Yorker draws criticism over "kind of pregnant" framing in early pregnancy essay

The New Yorker drew criticism Thursday after promoting an essay that described the binary definition of pregnancy as "misleading" and suggested a woman could be "kind of pregnant." The essay, "The Unsettling Ambiguity of Early Pregnancy," by Apoorva Tadepalli, examined what at-home pregnancy tests can and cannot tell women, grounded in the writer's experience with multiple pregnancy losses and a current pregnancy.

The magazine's promotion on X described at-home tests as capturing only a moment when an embryo has implanted, and said a woman might still be testing positive while being "kind of pregnant, a little bit pregnant, or almost pregnant, or maybe pregnant." That framing drew immediate pushback from several named voices who argued the language blurred a binary biological fact.

What the tests actually detect

The Food and Drug Administration says at-home pregnancy tests detect human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG, a hormone produced after a fertilized egg attaches to the uterine wall. The agency notes that testing too early can produce inaccurate results and that a positive home test provides no information about how a pregnancy will develop. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists states that pregnancy begins at implantation and that viability can require additional evaluation as development progresses.

Elizabeth Barcohana, the America First Policy Institute's California Ambassador to the America First Women's initiative, drew a clear line between those two things. Pregnancy, she said in a Thursday statement, is a physical, biological state triggered when a fertilized embryo implants and initiates a hormonal reaction. Viability is a separate question. She also argued The New Yorker's editors "betrayed the author" with the promotional framing, saying Tadepalli was writing about something "totally legitimate for women trying to start a family" and that the essay's real subject, the limits of early testing and the emotional weight that follows for women who have experienced loss, deserved a less loaded presentation.

Lisa Cusack, president of the Don't L.A. My Burbank PAC, said the piece read as "a tortured attempt to make pregnancy into a subjective experience in order to justify abortion." She argued that a test's technical limitations do not alter the underlying biological state. Roxanne Hoge, chair of the Los Angeles County Republican Party and a mother of four, made a similar point: uncertainty over whether a pregnancy will remain viable does not change whether a woman is pregnant.

Tadepalli's essay described testing positive during five pregnancies and spending time in each unsure whether she would miscarry. Those experiences, she wrote, shaped her ability to emotionally embrace her current pregnancy.

Fox News Digital reached out to The New Yorker for comment and did not receive an immediate response.