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Embryos Don’t Have Hearts
Within the last few years, six U.S. states — Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Georgia, Iowa, and North Dakota — have passed so-called “heartbeat bills,” a term that’s become shorthand for a proposed ban on abortions beginning six weeks into a pregnancy, or the point at which a “fetal heartbeat” can be detected. Four more states have similar bills pending. Anti-abortion activists have doubled down on “heartbeat” messaging — in a recent news release regarding the ACLU’s legal challenge of the Ohio bill, the state’s leading anti-abortion group, Ohio Right to Life, used the term eight times in 300 words.
But obstetricians say the term “fetal heartbeat” is misleading, and that this scientific misunderstanding, among countless others, may contribute to negative public opinion toward abortion.
The Cut