Did you see this past week how gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams made claims that there is “no such thing” as a fetal heartbeat at six weeks into pregnancy? She argued the heartbeat at six weeks is a “a social construct that has more to do with the anticipation of future outcomes and little to do with what is actually present.”
Sadly, MSNBC opinion columnist Dr. Esther Choo defended that argument.
Choo’s column went to work legitimizing Abrams’ theory that the heartbeat is part of a pro-life conspiracy to stigmatize abortion. Pro-lifers were in disbelief, and the clip went viral on Twitter. How could it not. Let me read you some of things that Dr. Choo shared alongside Abrams:
“But a human life is more than a heartbeat, and a ‘heartbeat’ is insufficient to produce a human…not least when it only reflects periodic electrical activity produced by a clump of precursor cells.” Choo also agreed with Abrams that the fetal heartbeat at six weeks is made up to artificially bolster parental attachment to the fetus.
She said, “the ‘heartbeat’ seems more concrete than a line on a test stick. But that meaning, as Abrams stated, is a social construct that has more to do with the anticipation of future outcomes and little to do with what is actually present in the uterus at that point.”
The doctor went on to provide her assessment on what that heartbeat really is, writing, “it merely reflects electrical activity produced by a tiny, amorphous clump of cells.
Within the less than half-an-inch mass, there is not yet any structure recognizable as a heart, no pumping of blood, no circulatory system within which it could be pumped, and no developed end organs to pump it to.”
The sterile description continued: “Heart tissue grown in a lab will also pulsate, as will cells dissolved down from a heart and no longer organized into the structure of the original organ.”
Dr. Choo and Stacy Abrams do you know whose design you are trying to tear apart?
I wish I was done, but I am not.
Dr. Choo also added, “And the ultrasound machine, in turn, translates such activity into a low audible whir that is a product of the machine itself, rather than amplification of any existing sound.”
Choo concluded her column claiming that, “in using the ultrasound to detect heartbeats, pro-lifers use it to measure things it was not designed to measure — for example, the personhood of the embryo or the viability or nonviability of my personal autonomy.”
“It is a manufactured sound designed to convince people that men have the right to take control of a woman’s body.”
And you say?
