Watch Darrell Issa Obliterate Jasmine Crockett's Self-Righteous Performance About Protecti...
Matt Taibbi Lays Out Biden-Era Censorship of Conservatives on Social Media
Right Before Corey Booker Began His Crying on the Senate Floor, His Staffer...
Trump Rakes Democrat Senator Over the Coals for Trying to Stop Tariffs
Sen. Cory Booker Has Been Railing Against Trump on Senate Floor for 16...
Attorney General Orders Prosecutors to Seek Death Penalty for Luigi Mangione
NRA Files Lawsuit Challenging Colorado's Gun Excise Tax
Marine Le Pen Was Barred From Seeking Public Office. Trump, Musk Have...
Three Words Explain March's Illegal Border Crossing Numbers
Voters in This State Show Support for Creating a State-Level DOGE
Madness: Why British Cops Showed Up at a Family's Home and Arrested Both...
Harvard Funding Under Review Over Antisemitism
Fani Willis Caught Again With Lover After Insisting Affair Ended
DOGE Just Gutted the US Institute of Peace
Local Outlet Goes After Marsha Blackburn Over Town Hall Event, but That’s Not...
Tipsheet

Let's Explore Stacey Abrams' Bizarre Comment on Fetal Heartbeats and Abortion

A follow-up on Sarah's post from last evening, which highlighted comments from Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams, who is currently trailing Gov. Brian Kemp across multiple polls.  Appearing at a forum, Abrams asserted that there's "no such thing" as a fetal heartbeat at six weeks -- the point after which a number of states have passed or implemented 'heartbeat law' limitations on most abortions.  That notion, she said, is a myth based on a "manufactured sound" designed to allow men to "take control of" women's bodies. Watch:

Advertisement


Let's set aside the fact that substantial majorities of American women support significant abortion limitations, which undermines the supposed motivation behind her most recent bizarre conspiracy.  Instead, let's discuss whether she's correct that fetal heartbeats aren't a real biological phenomenon six weeks into pregnancies, and that evidence to the contrary is a "manufactured sound."  National Review's John McCormack points out that even abortion giant Planned Parenthood used to acknowledge this medical reality, but has scrubbed such mentions from their website, now that they've become politically problematic for the pro-abortion agenda (which I often hasten to differentiate from the pro-choice position):


Quite a few journalists -- an overwhelmingly and disproportionately pro-choice to pro-abortion group -- have leapt to defend and justify Abrams' comments.  Their argument seems to be, actually, it's not truly a heartbeat until ten weeks or later.  A few examples:

Advertisement


Parsing "heartbeat" versus "cardiac activity" is an interesting choice.  As a number of people have asked, how would you feel if you were told your cardiac activity was about to cease?  As for the claim by Kessler, the Washington Post's fact-checker, here's a thread by a medical doctor refuting it:

Advertisement


"I can't believe I have to report a fact checker to Twitter for misinformation, Shanker remarked in the same thread.  "This is what we've come to."  Kessler is also getting rightly criticized for another flawed "fact check" on this general subject: 


Nearly every elected Democrat in Washington opposes any limitation on third-term elective abortions.  That's an appalling fact, no matter how it gets dressed up by sympathetic journalists.  Another prominent physician, Dr. Nicole Saphier, flagged Abrams for medical misinformation regarding her "false statement" on fetal heartbeats.  In my response to Abrams and her defenders, I wondered if they would agree to restrictions further along in pregnancy if we accepted their standard on when a proper fetal heartbeat begins:


They'll labor and strain to deny the existence of a heartbeat at six weeks, then they'll find some other reason or euphemism to defend intentionally stopping that heartbeat, even after they concede it exists.  Their stance requires a combination of systematic dehumanization, tortured rhetorical games, and outright denial of science. If you think a distinct human heartbeat doesn’t represent a person worthy of legal protection, make that case. Don’t deny that heartbeat’s existence.  Apropos of nothing, I'll leave you with this scientific development about non-human clumps of cells, indistinguishable from 'pregnant people's' bodies:

Advertisement

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Recommended

Trending on Townhall Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement