The Iowa Supreme Court agreed last year to hear Governor Kim Reynolds’ appeal on a temporary block of the state’s new heartbeat law, and the pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has filed a brief claiming that any kind of law referring to fetal heartbeats is not based on medical science. The group claims references to fetal heartbeats are “arbitrary.”
In the brief, ACOG described itself as “the nation’s leading group of physicians providing evidence-based obstetric and gynecologic care,” and stated that “[a]bortion is an essential part of comprehensive health care and is safe.” ACOG then tried to outright deny that fetal heartbeats even exist:
The Legislature defined “fetal heartbeat” to include the embryonic cardiac activity that occurs as a result of electrical flickering of an early portion of the embryonic tissue that over time will develop into the fetal heart, which typically is detectable at approximately six weeks’ gestation. However, as a matter of medical science, fetal cardiac development is extremely complex and continues throughout pregnancy.
While cardiac development is, indeed, extremely complex and does, indeed, continue throughout pregnancy, that does not negate the fact that detecting “embryonic cardiac activity” is one of the very first confirmations that there is a new human organism developing in the womb. Telling the public that they haven’t really witnessed or seen a human being with a heartbeat on the screen during a pregnancy ultrasound is, to be blunt, gaslighting.
They further concluded that legislators made an “arbitrary determination” based on medical science that “does not reflect how cardiac activity is viewed in the actual practice of medicine.”
ACOG has previously tried to claim that no heartbeat exists in the first trimester, claiming in an abortion guide that “[u]ntil the chambers of the heart have been developed and can be detected via ultrasound (roughly 17-20 weeks of gestation), it is not accurate to characterize the embryo’s or fetus’s cardiac development as a heartbeat.”
This is a rather strange claim to make from a medical organization, considering that the fetal heartbeat is well known to exist… including in medical literature published as recently as 2019:
The human heart is one of the first organs to form and function during embryogenesis. By the end of gestational week 3, passive oxygen diffusion becomes insufficient to support metabolism of the developing embryo, and thus the fetal heart becomes vital for oxygen and nutrient distribution. The initiation of the first heart beat via the primitive heart tube begins at gestational day 22, followed by active fetal blood circulation by the end of week 4.
The National Library of Medicine likewise states that, at six weeks, the “heart continues to grow and now beats at a regular rhythm. This can be seen by vaginal ultrasound.”
A video from the Endowment for Human Development likewise shows that the heart is beating — not with meaningless “cardiac activity,” but with blood actually being pumped throughout the preborn child’s tiny body.
Dr. Donna Harrison of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists previously noted:
The narrative that embryos don’t have heartbeats at six weeks’ gestation is a blatant example of misinformation that can be corrected by studying basic embryology. In fact, at six weeks’ gestation, the embryonic heart rhythmically contracts to pump blood through its arteries, which flows to the placenta to exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. To call this anything other than a beating heart is dishonest, and serves only to dehumanize preborn people.
ACOG is evidently following Planned Parenthood’s lead; the abortion corporation previously acknowledged the reality of fetal heartbeats, before ultimately scrubbing their website of that reality.
ACOG clearly has decided that a pro-abortion agenda is more important to them than the actual truth… while positioning themselves as an honest medical authority.
