MSNBC opinion columnist Dr. Esther Choo defended Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ recent claims that there is "no such thing" as a fetal heartbeat six weeks into pregnancy, arguing the heartbeat at six weeks is "a social construct that has more to do with the anticipation of future outcomes and little to do with what is actually present."
On Thursday, a clip of Abrams denying that an unborn baby’s heartbeat is present at six weeks went viral on Twitter, shocking pro-lifers. In it, Abrams said, "There is no such thing as a heartbeat at six weeks. It is a manufactured sound designed to convince people that men have the right to take control of a woman's body."
Choo’s column went to work legitimizing Abrams’ theory that the heartbeat is part of a pro-life conspiracy to stigmatize abortion.
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The doctor began by claiming that critics of Abrams’ theory – those claiming it is a legitimate heartbeat – employed a "kind of soft-on-the-facts-strong-on-the-emotional-overlay milieu" that nurtures "policies that are both dangerous and ludicrous."
Choo called Abrams’ remarks "difficult to assail," and insisted, "At six weeks of pregnancy, there is no heart. There is no sound."
The doctor continued to dismiss Abrams’ critics: "Despite tremendous advances in our understanding of human anatomy and physiology, we retain an inclination to imbue even the whisper of a heart’s presence with outsize emotional significance."
She then said, "But a human life is more than a heartbeat, and a ‘heartbeat’ is insufficient to produce a human, not least when it only reflects periodic electrical activity produced by a clump of precursor cells."
Choo agreed with Abrams that the fetal heartbeat at six weeks is made up to artificially bolster parental attachment to the fetus. She said, "the ‘heartbeat’ seems more concrete than a line on a test stick. But that meaning, as Abrams stated, is a social construct that has more to do with the anticipation of future outcomes and little to do with what is actually present in the uterus at that point."
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The doctor provided her assessment on what that heartbeat really is, writing, "it merely reflects electrical activity produced by a tiny, amorphous clump of cells. Within the less than half-an-inch mass, there is not yet any structure recognizable as a heart, no pumping of blood, no circulatory system within which it could be pumped, and no developed end organs to pump it to."
The sterile description continued: "Heart tissue grown in a lab will also pulsate, as will cells dissolved down from a heart and no longer organized into the structure of the original organ."
She added, "And the ultrasound machine, in turn, translates such activity into a low audible whir that is a product of the machine itself, rather than amplification of any existing sound."
Choo concluded her column claiming that, "in using the ultrasound to detect heartbeats, pro-lifers use it to measure things it was not designed to measure — for example, the personhood of the embryo or the viability or nonviability of my personal autonomy."
