Media Keeps Repeating Forced Birthers' Lies About Basic Biology

[babylonsister]

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/09/forced-birthers-heartbeat-lie
9/05/21 6:30am

Media Keeps Repeating Forced Birthers' Lies About Basic Biology
At six weeks, an embryo does not have a heart. Period.
By Joan McCarter


Wednesday night, the PBS News Hour's John Yang said this in a news story about the U.S. Supreme Court's shadow docket overturning of abortion rights by refusing to stop the Texas law, the most punitive in the country, from going into effect: "[T]he new law bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is usually after about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women are even aware they are pregnant."

Part of that is true, the part where most women are not aware that they are pregnant. The other part, the heartbeat part, is pure spinning from the far-right extremist forced birthers. But it appears in national news story after story after story after story. That's a massive failure on the part of, well, everybody—but particularly the reporters telling these stories—to get their facts straight.

They are accepting without question the definition the forced birthers have given to these efforts, a term used precisely because it sounds sciencey and medical and real. It is not. There's just so much wrong here that there's a lot to unpack, from "six weeks" to "fetal" to "heartbeat. The part that Yang and almost all the others get right is that most people don't know that they're pregnant at this point, but there's even so much more than that.

First, the "six weeks." Because the moment of conception is an elusive thing to pin down in most cases, doctors use the first day of the last menstrual period as the starting point for counting. They've been using that calculation for nearly 200 years, since Franz Karl Naegele, a German obstetrician, came up with it in 1830. The calculation: establish the first day of the woman's last menstrual period, count back three calendar months, and then add one year and seven days to that date. Which is confusing as hell and is based on a 28-day cycle which many women don't have at all, and which is subject to change due to all kinds of factors from illness to stress.

Providers in Texas estimate that 85% of their patients are going to be denied care because of this law, because vanishingly few people are aware they are pregnant and able to schedule appointments to confirm that and able to schedule the procedure by the six-week mark. That's something Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in her dissent, and proof that the Supreme Court needs more women of color, since she was the only one to use that fact to show just how extreme this thing is.

But the confusion about just how pregnant a pregnant person is is one of the things the forced birthers intended, and one reason they lit on "fetal heartbeat" as the point in time when abortion should be banned. So let's break that down. First, at this point the mass of cells in question is actually an embryo, not a fetus. It doesn't become a fetus for another month or so, according to medical science.

It certainly doesn't have a heart, or a heartbeat at six weeks. It has cells that are starting to organize. What can be detected at six weeks is not a heart. “At six weeks, the embryo is forming what will eventually develop into mature systems. There’s an immature neurological system, and there’s a very immature cardiovascular system." The rhythmic sound that can be heard is "a group of cells with electrical activity. That's what the heartbeat is at that stage of gestation … We are in no way talking about any kind of cardiovascular system." That's all from Jennifer Kerns, an ob-gyn at University of California, San Francisco and director of research in obstetrics and gynecology at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.

Early cardiac activity—cells vibrating with electrical currents as they start to develop—is what is happening at six weeks. "What's really happening at that point is that our ultrasound technology has gotten good enough to be able to detect electrical activity in a rudimentary group of cells." That's from Sarah Horvath, an ob-gyn with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Or in ob-gyn Jen Gunter's words, it's "fetal pole cardiac activity." It's not a heart.

But calling it heart makes people imagine an infant. "Using the word heartbeat here is an intentional obfuscation," Kerns says. "Hearing the word heartbeat plays upon people’s emotions … when in fact what it does is effectively ban abortions for many people, because many people don't even know they're pregnant at six weeks."

Horvath adds, "I do think there’s a deliberate conflation of terms going on in legislation in order to try to co-opt the science, or at least the scientific language. […]These bans are really just arbitrarily chosen points in time in a pregnancy that are strictly there because they want a complete ban on abortion care." Bingo.

Most reporters have been great at getting the "before a woman knows she's pregnant" part down, because that's easily understood and a widely shared experience. But using the word "heartbeat," saying as PBS's Yang did that the law "bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is usually after about six weeks of pregnancy," is just perpetuating bad science, bad medicine, and extremely deceptive politics.

We're going to be hearing a lot about this ban, especially when the look-alike laws start proliferating through Republican states. It would be a great service to everyone if the traditional media stopped accepting the deceptive, loaded, and false terms of the far right in talking about it.

Published with permission of Daily Kos.

[SharonClark]

1. It's not a baby either.

[jimfields33]

4. True. I've never heard it called an embryo before.

I’ve heard most call it a fetus or some call it a baby when they find out their pregnant (but that’s normally after 3 months).

[wnylib]

10. Embryo is the early stage, before

it becomes a fetus.

[Hekate]

12. Before even that, it's a zygote, which is why I insist on never calling such early pregnancies ...

… a “fetus” or a “baby.”

[wnylib]

18. True.

[Delphinus]

2. Thank you

The truth has to get out there.

[Bayard]

3. Saving this info

Thanks!

[Mr.Bill]

5. Somewhere on the internet

there is a picture of a fetus with four limbs, a head and two eyes. It appears to be human. The trick is to ask an anti abortion person if they think that is a human being at that stage of development. The will all say yes.

It is, in fact, an elephant.

[KT2000]

7. On my walk one day

I saw what looked like an embryo on the side of the road in the dirt. It looked very similar to a human's embryo but it was from one of the many animals that live around here - most likely one hit by a car. It was then I got the picture of the pro-lifers messaging. Their posters and ads could be showing animal embryos and they would not know the difference.

[Kali]

6. are you saying wingnuts ignore science and tell lies?

no! can't be!

[monkeyman1]

8. A stupid question ?

why can't the media be held liable for printing a lie when people die as a result of it ?

[littlemissmartypants]

14. Why make such an illogical quantum leap

When the real issue is the medical education of the press, journalists and reporters that are inaccurately describing the science?

[monkeyman1]

16. they are not journalists & reporter's - just day labor that can type a little !

[jaxexpat]

9. Soon it will be the "twinkle in the father's eye" which becomes the proof of viability.

Such is the power of the conservative POV. Questions?

[Hekate]

11. Please, DUers, write to these newspeople every single time they say this. If even a few of us ...

…take it on, it will have an effect. If a lot of us do it, it happens faster.

Thank you.

[IronLionZion]

13. People who take horse dewormer are all about deliberate conflation

Media should not be a simple repeater. They should have their own medical folks on retainer to check these facts. Same with COVID misinformation.

[littlemissmartypants]

15. I wonder if she shared this with the PBS News Hour's John Yang?

Does it say anywhere in the article? I'm too lazy tonight to click through and I already have 20 tabs open.

[SergeStorms]

17. This should be taught in high school.

But we know that will never happen. We can't get parents to protect their children by having them wear a mask in school. Teach them the reality of an embryo developing into a fetus? 🤯 Good luck with that!