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Wednesday, October 19, 2022

The Beat Beat Beat of the Abortion-Media Machine

Alexandra DeSanctis of National Review already beat me to writing a run-down of the media's obfuscation machine. In it, she provides an extensive list of media outlets who claim one way or another that there's no such thing as a fetal heartbeat. Readers should take care to mentally organize the different tacks media outlets take on this. Some claim that "fetal heartbeat" is a misnomer, because at 6 weeks, it's technically still an embryo, not a fetus. Others claim it's wrong because the activity taking place in the embryo, the pumping of blood, isn't making a sound. Finally, some claim that the heartbeat shouldn't matter either because it's not a "true" heart, with four chambers operating completely independently of the mother or even that there's no cardiac activity at all.1

What Stacey Abrams said was in line with the second grouping of claims--that the ultrasound machine is making the sound, not the embryonic heart.

Note that this entire controversy is 95% driven by political sides playing word games. Republicans chose "heartbeat" for a reason--it's salient, understandable, and persuasive. For that exact same reason, Democrats hate the term and will do everything in their power to prevent its use--focus on the sound aspect of the heartbeat, argue it's not a "fetal" heartbeat, argue it's not a "heart", all of the above. "Heartbeat" has enough ambiguity to allow for pedantic arguments.

The Facts of Life

There's obviously variability in human development and nothing is 100% exact, but science basically agrees that a rudimentary circulatory system and heart develop between 3 and 6 weeks after ovulation. The "heartbeat" that is heard is an electrical, rhythmic pulsing of the cardiac cells indicating the pumping of blood. This is not the same as the heartbeat that we hear in an adult or child; our notion of a heartbeat is the sound of the heart valves opening and closing.

Sources:

• "Fetal cardiac function during the first trimester of pregnancy." Journal of Prenatal Medicine
  • "The heart rate increases between the 5th week of gestation and 9th week of gestatio
  • "Cardiovascular development in a human embryo occurs between 3 and 6 weeks after ovulation."
  • "Cardiac function is the first sign of independent cardiac activity that can be explored with non-invasive techniques such as Doppler ultrasound."
  • "At the end of the 4th week of gestation, the heartbeats of the embryo begin."
  • "The heart, whose development starts at the 3rd week of gestation has rapid and irregular contractions capable of pumping the blood inside vessels."
• whattoexpect.com (which cites American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, British Medical Journal, Johns Hopkins, etc.)
  • "By week 5 of pregnancy, the cluster of cells that will become your baby's heart has begun to develop or pulse. If you have a first trimester ultrasound (around or after week 6 of pregnancy), your practitioner or a trained sonographer will check on this embryonic cardiac activity."
  • "You may see (and/or hear) cardiac activity for the first time from week 6 of pregnancy or later"
  • "By 6 weeks, the embryonic heart cells will pulse about 110 times a minute."
• Even Planned Parenthood said there was a fetal heartbeat, at least it did prior to Abrams's pronouncement.
• Here's a rundown of further scientific sources.

Twitter Facts

Given all of this information, why did Twitter decide to side with Abrams?

Well, Twitter cites NPR and NBC news. In the NPR piece, the author cites an OB-GYN who "specializes in abortion care" and an OB-GYN who is an associate professar at UC-San Francisco. The former should probably be ignored given there is no pro-life specialist provided to provide balance. She claims that it is electrical activity that can be seen in the ultrasound and the sound itself is created by the ultrasound machine. The other specialist concurs. "In no way is this detecting a functional cardiovascular system or a functional heart." It goes on to say that "fetal heartbeat" is just short-hand and shouldn't be taken literally. It seems that the reporter did not ask why physicians would even bother referring to sounds the ultrasound machine makes instead of saying the parents aren't really hearing anything of note.

In the NBC news fact-check, the expert it cites says that at six weeks, the embryo develops a tube that generates sporadic electric pulses which is "far from a fully formed heart." Note here that they are throwing out the "this isn't a fully-formed heart", which is a claim that no one is making. This is the journalist's addition, as it's not in quotes and is meant to shift, either deliberately or conveniently, the terms of the debate away from "Is there a heart beat?" to "Is there a fully formed heart in a 6-week embryo?" A second expert says that it's accurate to say there's "cardiac activity." Finally, a third expert comes in to say that the heartbeat that is heard during an ultrasound is just "an electrical pulse", seemingly confirming what NPR said. But, in fact, this is the same person NPR cited, so it's not confirmation at all.

In neither article did the author report on seemingly significant questions to this entire debate: "Is blood circulating? Is the heart pumping? In what ways is the embryonic heart at six weeks functioning like a baby's heart?" These questions get to the heart of the issue at hand, is the developing baby's heart functioning as a normal heart. Whether it's fully formed or not doesn't matter, whether this is the exact same source of sound that we hear as an adult's heartbeat doesn't matter. What matters is whether the sound significant biologically.

Given the missing questions, the similarities in the fact-checks, and even citing the same person, both articles don't seem particularly objective or thorough, yet Twitter relied on them to support a political claim. In addition, neither of those fact-checks indicated that the author's reached out to others with a different opinion or verified that the sounds heard in ultrasound were generated by the machine.

This isn't a slam-dunk 'they were wrong' case, but it's indicative of a real problem being caused by today's news media complex, social media and their ties. Journalists and social media workforces are dominated by left-leaning individuals. Ideally, they would keep their opinions in check, separate from their work and would provide objective analysis and moderation, but I think we all understand that the world isn't ideal and that their positions bleed through their work leading to biased outcomes. Unfortunately, these biases when combined compound causing even larger biases. Imagine a case where a biased reporter gets a fact-check wrong, and then social media moderators who, because they are biased, are more aware of that fact-check and the issue itself and unaware of legitimate, contradictory information, applies that fact-check to suppress contradictory, yet correct information. This propagates the misinformation even further.

1The Atlantic article cited is quite something. It's clearly written by a pro-abortion absolutist. It contains 5 factual errors, including the one DeSanctis notes about whether there's any cardiac activity at all at 6 weeks. It also contains gems such as "Ultrasound made it possible for the male doctor to evaluate the fetus without female interference" and "The origins of fetal ultrasound lie in stealth warfare." Both of which are true statements, but are such narrow interpretations of the facts and are meant to imply something nefarious. Does anyone believe ultrasound was developed in any way so male doctors could exert more control over women or fetuses?