‘OUT OF STEP’

Calling Abortion Bans ‘Fetal Heartbeat’ Bills Is Misleading, Say Doctors

Country’s largest panel of women’s health doctors says six-week-old embryos don’t have heartbeats and the bills are misleadingly named.

America’s foremost physicians’ group for women’s health has hit out at U.S. lawmakers who are labeling abortion bans as “fetal heartbeat bills,” saying that science and medicine has proved six-week-old embryos don’t have heartbeats as most people understand them. The president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists—the country’s largest organization for doctors specializing in women’s health—said that the uses of the term “fetal heartbeat” in legislation are wrong and “do not reflect medical accuracy or clinical understanding.” According to The Guardian, panel leader Ted Anderson said: “What is interpreted as a heartbeat in these bills is actually electrically induced flickering of a portion of the fetal tissue that will become the heart as the embryo develops.” The doctor went on to say the use of the term is “misleading language, out of step with the anatomical and clinical realities of that stage of pregnancy,” and urged politicians to base their policies on “science and evidence.”