“There’s a fetal heartbeat at six weeks” Priscilla Thompson (below) said on Stephanie Ruhle Reports on MSNBC this morning. This is hopefully inadvertently stated comment is anti-abortion propaganda. It is incorrect. There is no actual fetal heartbeat at 6 weeks. In fact, there isn’t even a fetus at six weeks. It is called an embryo.
Following fertilization the embryonic stage of development continues until the end of the 10th week (Wikipedia). If Gov. Abbott recognized this and used the 10 week period draconian and unconstitutional as the law would still be, it would at least give women an extra month to get an abortion.
I heard a physician explain this on another MSNBC show last night so I decided to do some research and write this diary about the subject.
But what exactly do we mean when we talk about a "fetal heartbeat" at six weeks of pregnancy? Although some people might picture a heart-shaped organ beating inside a fetus, this is not the case.
Rather, at six weeks of pregnancy, an ultrasound can detect "a little flutter in the area that will become the future heart of the baby," said Dr. Saima Aftab, medical director of the Fetal Care Center at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami. This flutter happens because the group of cells that will become the future "pacemaker" of the heart gain the capacity to fire electrical signals, she said.
But the heart is far from fully formed at this stage, and the "beat" isn't audible; if doctors put a stethoscope up to a woman's belly this early on in her pregnancy, they would not hear a heartbeat, Aftab told Live Science. (What's more, it isn't until the eighth week of pregnancy that the baby is called a fetus; prior to that, it's still considered an embryo, according to the Cleveland Clinic.)
It's been only in the last few decades that doctors have even been able to detect this flutter at six weeks, thanks to the use of more-sophisticated ultrasound technologies, Aftab said. Previously, the technology wasn't advanced enough to detect the flutter that early on in pregnancy.
Although a lot of weight seems to be put on the detection of this flutter, "by no means does it translate to viability of the heart" or viability of the pregnancy, Aftab said.
Put more simply what the anti-abortion zealots want to call a detectable heartbeat in an unborn baby is a group of cells that will eventually develop to control the heartbeat firing electrical signals that couldn’t even have been detected a few decades ago before there were advanced ultrasound techniques. Even so, some scientific publications consider these electrical signals to be heartbeats. For example perinatology.com (excerpt below) describes the six week old collection of cells which they factually refer to as an embryo as already having a heart.
| Gestational Age 6 weeks (1.4 months) . Embryonic Age 4 weeks |
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- The embryo is now about the size of a pea.
- The average crown to rump length is about 0.2 inches (0.4 cm)
- The eyes, nostrils , and arms are taking shape.
- The heart is beating at about 110 beats per minute and sometimes may be seen using a transvaginal ultrasound at this time.
|
Another website, the from the government, MedLinePlus.gov calls the embryo a baby and says its heart is beating:
Baby's heart continues to grow and now beats at a regular rhythm.
In fact from my research what is being detected isn’t really a fetal heartbeat no matter how one defines it. The electrical activity being detected is coming from an embryo, not a fetus. Nothing is beating.
I reviewed several websites aimed at expectant mothers and as one would expect they have titles like this
By week 5, a baby’s heart tube begins to beat spontaneously, though you quite can't hear it yet.
and this time.
Here’s a deceptive excerpt from the later article:
By 6 weeks, your baby’s heart is beating 110 times a minute. In just two more weeks, the fetal heart rate will rise to 150 to 170 beats a minute. That’s about twice as fast as yours!
Invariably these websites call an embryo either a fetus or more commonly, an unborn baby, or even a baby and say that at six weeks the baby’s heart is beating when if fact what will eventually be the fetus and then when viable the unborn baby’s heart is sending electrical signals and not actually beating.
The matter of semantics is important because if you call never call the collection of cells that will become a baby at viability an embryo or even a fetus you can say that any abortion is killing an unborn child. Most websites aimed at expectant mothers, and certainly the pro-life propaganda, does not even make the distinction this one for expectant mothers does in their article
I award this website modified kudos since It is more factual than most.
Excerpt:
What is the difference between an embryo and a fetus?
An embryo is the early stage of human development in which organs are critical body structures are formed. An embryo is termed a fetus beginning in the 11th week of pregnancy, which is the 9th week of development after fertilization of the egg. A zygote is a single-celled organism resulting from a fertilized egg.
At what point does a fetus become a baby?
Within 24 hours after fertilization, the egg that will become your baby rapidly divides into many cells. By the eighth week of pregnancy, your baby will change names from an embryo to a fetus. There are about 40 weeks to a typical pregnancy.
However, it goes on like the other similar websites I looked at to turn the embryo into a baby by referring it as a whole human being in the last paragraph below:
Does an embryo have a heartbeat?
The heart of an embryo starts beating at about week 5 of pregnancy. It may be possible to detect, at this point, using vaginal ultrasound. Throughout the pregnancy and delivery, healthcare providers monitor the heartbeat of the fetus. Anyone who has concerns about the fetal heartbeat should contact a doctor.
In which month of pregnancy embryo heart is formed?
Cardiovascular development in a human embryo occurs between 3 and 6 weeks after ovulation. At the end of the fourth week of gestation, the heartbeats of the embryo begin. The fourth/fifth week of gestation would be around the sixth/seventh week of pregnancy. At around week 8, the embryo is officially called a foetus.
Is an embryo alive?
Embryos are whole human beings, at the early stage of their maturation. The term ‘embryo‘, similar to the terms ‘infant’ and ‘adolescent’, refers to a determinate and enduring organism at a particular stage of development.
Going back to what prompted this diary, I would hope that MSNBC leaves the reporting about the medical aspects of the abortion controversy to doctors rather than reporters.
The poll, added after diary had 44 comments, includes surgical or chemical abortions.
