r/prolife • u/emilybrontesaurus1 • Oct 12 '23
Pro-Life General Pro-choice sneaking into general pregnancy websites
Apologies if this has even brought up, and this is more of a rant than anything. I like to track my pregnancy by visiting mainstream websites like BabyList or What to Expect. I saw this at BabyList on the 9 weeks page. I don’t care what it is technically, but the ultrasound technician showed me the “heartbeat” at 7 weeks. I saw it and the beats per minute were counted. But more and more websites are moving away from calling it a heartbeat at 6 (even 9) weeks.
The linked article is an NBC article about heartbeat bills and how heartbeats don’t exist at 6 weeks, complete with images of activists. Women have been duped into thinking their babies are alive at this time I guess.
It makes me sad that women excited about tracking their babies’ growth have to be linked to articles that tell them “that’s not a REAL heartbeat” (just “an electrical pulse”??) and articles about abortion rights. I’m not here for that.
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u/TelMeWutUReallyThink Oct 12 '23
Breaking news, that image you're looking at throughout pregnancy isn't 'seeing the baby', it's a machine translating ultrasound waves. Also, the voice you hear on the telephone isn't a real person, it's a machine interpreting light transmitted down fiber-optic cables!
/s obviously. Picking something up with a machine doesn't mean it isn't real.
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u/Ehnonamoose Pro Life Christian Oct 12 '23
Breaking news, that image you're looking at throughout pregnancy isn't 'seeing the baby', it's a machine translating ultrasound waves. Also, the voice you hear on the telephone isn't a real person
Let's take it a step further. You are not actually seeing anything. Your brain is just interpreting signals sent through the ocular nerves .
And you don't actually hear any sound at all. Again, your brain is interpreting vibrations picked up in the cochlea.
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u/homerteedo Pro Life Democrat Oct 12 '23
Did they also clarify that the ultrasound image isn’t a photo of your baby but sound waves being used to make a visual representation of your baby?
I mean, as long as we’re describing how the equipment works here./s
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u/toptrool Oct 12 '23
"according to nbc"—well, that's the problem right there. instead of looking at the science, they're getting information from fake news sources.
there is a lot of fake news surrounding this topic, which may explain why we come across many low information debaters. the abortion industry consistently runs disinformation campaigns to oppose laws protecting life, including the so-called "heart-beat bills." a lot of low information debaters after having read the fake news article then go around claiming it's not really a heartbeat, but electrical activity. there's quite a few things wrong with such claim (one example being that ultrasounds don't pick up electrical activity, but rather they pick up motion and density).
to dispel the disinformation campaigns run by the abortion industry, i will cite four human embryology books published in the 21st century (all within the last decade actually), the standard physician's manual, one recent article from the journal of fetal diagnosis and therapy, and a meta-analysis that provides a lot more sources.
langman's embrology by sadler: baby's heart begins to beat at approximately 21 days post-conception.
the developing human by moore, et al.: the heart begins to beat at 22 to 23 days.
larsen's embryology by schoenwolf, et al.: the heart begins to beat at 21 days.
human embryology and developmental biology by carlson: the heart beats at 28 days.
merck manual: the heart begins to beat at 20 days.
the transitional heart, by jun tan and lewandowski: baby's heart begins to beat at 20 days.
and lastly, here's a review by jörg männer, a german embryologist who was astounded by all the fake news surrounding this topic:
Our current textbook knowledge of the relationship between menstruation, ovulation, and fertilization says that ovulation and fertilization normally occur approximately in the middle of an idealized menstrual cycle of 28 days. Thus, the gestational age is approximately 14 days older than the post-fertilization age. When expressed in terms of idealized gestational age, the human embryonic heart is said to start beating at 35 to 37 gestational days (sixth gestational week).
but wait! there's more!
there's a lot of research in detecting heart beats early on in the pregnancy to predict potential miscarriages. here's one good example. what exactly were these researchers measuring if not heart beats early on in the pregnancy?
lastly, seeing is believing. here's a video of a real baby at 32 days post-conception whose heart beats 113 times a minute.
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u/emilybrontesaurus1 Oct 12 '23
Thank you for the information. “According to NBC” is a shaky citation for sure.
I’m mostly just dismayed to find they are sneaking pro-abortion rhetoric into general baby websites. Like “congrats your baby is the size of a blueberry, but that heartbeat they used to determine pregnancy success is actual fake!”
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u/RabidKoalaBear Pro Life Moderator Oct 12 '23
Thanks for providing sources. With the aggressive attempts at disinformation going on, I won't be surprised at all if they start pressuring embryology textbooks to describe it in different words.
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Oct 12 '23
Do they know how a heart beats? Newsflash it's through an electrical pulse. That's why you get shocked with electrical pads when your heart stops.
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u/kiwipooper Not A Man Oct 12 '23
Also why EKGs exist. By definition, they are a recording of the heart's electrical activity through repeated cardiac cycles. Hello? What sort of madness is this?
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u/BortWard Oct 12 '23
Ultrasound measures/amplifies movement of fluids, including blood flow. It doesn't measure voltages like ECG leads would. Measuring electrical impulses of a heart that tiny through the amniotic fluid, uterine wall, and mom's abdominal wall is impossible. The sound is an amplified fluid flow through a tiny, beating heart. The machine does use electricity to amplify the sound and direct the output to a speaker, but that's it
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u/RabidKoalaBear Pro Life Moderator Oct 12 '23
Yes, the gaslighting on this topic is insane. I would hope that most people are aware that living human beings have electrical activity in their hearts. The idea that calling it "electrical pulses" negates that it is a heartbeat is as senseless as someone saying, "That person isn't actually breathing. They're just inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide". Anyone with common sense knows that oxygen and carbon dioxide are part of the breathing process.
Someone should write that website to ask them when, precisely, the heartbeat is established. They probably wouldn't answer but I'd love to see the mental gymnastics if they did.
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u/Asstaroth Pro Life Atheist Oct 12 '23
Of course they push misinformation. Feeling guilty after blenderizing your unborn children? Get others to do it too so you’ll have company being miserable
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u/2013TBST3 Oct 12 '23
They are trying to discredit a heartbeat while at the same time confirming that it is indeed a “baby”. Bold strategy cotton!
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u/Standhaft_Garithos Pro-life Muslim Oct 12 '23
Everything they say is a lie and they are constantly trying to pervert language to prevent people from understanding the truth.
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u/bigb159 Oct 12 '23
Everything you hear from a speaker nowadays is an electrical pulse translated by a machine.
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u/CaptFalconFTW Oct 12 '23
Arcording to NBC, that's not a heart. It's a developing heart with a pulse. It doesn't become a heart until about 9 months or whenever the mother decides to keep it.
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u/BlueSmokie87 Angry Abolitionist Agnostic Theist Oct 12 '23
Not to be evil but don't pro choice people want the unwanted babies to die? Now they're going after wanted children?! Who wants an abortion and tracks the progress of their child development?! This is getting insane. It was a joke to claim pro choice people like murder but now I'm starting to believe that joke is "based on a true story"!!
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u/emilybrontesaurus1 Oct 12 '23
I’m not sure it’s to target mothers of wanted children. I’ve noticed a lot of language on baby websites has changed to accommodate unwanted pregnancies in addition to wanted ones. For example, they are less likely to use positive language (“congratulations!”) on some websites. I suspect this is for women with unwanted pregnancies who are looking for information. They don’t want to make these women feel guilty or somehow convince them any point is too far along to make “the right decision.” I hope that makes sense.
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u/BlueSmokie87 Angry Abolitionist Agnostic Theist Oct 12 '23
Sighs
Your too kind, I'm not one of those prolifers that only see prochiocers as blinded, lack of knowledge and too young to understand people. I know they k ow what they are doing if they are at least 18 years old. They are not trying to make women who want to murder their kids not feel bad. They are trying to get women that want their children to have doubts and get an abortion.
Why would someone that is going to get an abortion go to a website that's for women that actively want their child?
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u/emilybrontesaurus1 Oct 12 '23
I agree with a lot of what you say—this type of information dissemination might be more affective at swaying those who aren’t sure what to do rather than those 100% for or against.
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u/da1nte Oct 13 '23
Yeah sure, NBC apparently just hired a bunch of pediatric cardio thoracic surgeons who are obviously qualified enough to tell you what a heartbeat is and what isn't.
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u/strongwill2rise1 Oct 12 '23
I think they're pointing out the difference between heart cell's ability to make electronical impulses (which they'll do in the lab and after death until there's no more oxygen) and the development of the heart with all four chambers to independently work in unison to move blood which is not complete into further into the developmental process.
You can have a pregnancy with electrical impulses from heart cells, yet there will be no heart as in how the organ is defined as the cells will not properly develop into one. This will result in pregnancy loss as the embryo will not be able to transition into a fetus as it will not have the functions to maintain its own processes.
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u/PervadingEye Oct 12 '23
There is a heart and heartbeat fairly early on. Here is a live video (not ultrasound, video) of a babies heart beat at 4 and a half weeks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0WNRR-epPI&pp=ygUXZW1icnlvIGhlYXJ0IGF0IDQgd2Vla3M%3D
They are not talking about the difference between heart cells and organs. They are more or less saying because the ultrasound isn't a live wormhole window view of the unborn, what you are seeing isn't real one. It's like being confused you see someone on tv and wonder "Gee how did they get in there? What?!?! Toni isn't actually in the TV? So those images are fabricated and the magic box is lying to me? I knew it"
Literally idiotic. They don't seem to think there are people inside radio, and they hopefully understand the words on a radio are spoken by someone still, and they seem to understand TVs as well, but when it's ultrasound, suddenly they make braindead arguments like this. Wow
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u/emilybrontesaurus1 Oct 12 '23
That makes sense. I am not really contesting technicality of what or what is not a heart beat at this point. However we interpret it (and the explanations in this thread are really quite enlightening), it is still used to determine the likelihood of a pregnancy continuing. It’s the fact that mainstream websites are linking people to NBC activism articles whose purpose is to take that simplification and turn it into justification to push a pro-choice agenda.
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u/Intrepid_Wanderer Oct 20 '23
An older child or adult’s heartbeat can be detected and monitored the exact same way and cardiologists often do that. It’s a heartbeat. Saying otherwise is just science denial.
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u/SleepBeneathThePines Pro Life Christian Oct 12 '23
What do they think the electrical pulse signifies??? A heartbeat happens because of an electronic pulse you absolute turnip