Did you know? The Patriot Post is funded 100% by its readers. Help us stay front and center in the fight for Liberty and support the 2024 Year-End Campaign.

September 23, 2022

A Fetal Heartbeat Fact-Checking Disaster

After Stacey Abrams made a mind-numbing claim, the media rushed to her defense.

The Party of Science™ is in fact anti-science. We’ve said that before, but election-denying Georgia Governor Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams provided the latest example of denying the science.

“There is no such thing as a heartbeat at six weeks,” Abrams said of babies in the womb. “It is a manufactured sound designed to convince people that men have the right to take control of a woman’s body.”

We had no idea that there were people (probably men) whose job it is to pump in sound effects during ultrasounds at doctors’ offices, clinics, and hospitals around the country. But hey, go easy; Abrams, like Ketanji Brown Jackson, isn’t a biologist.

Now seriously, experiencing that heartbeat for the first time is one of the most exhilarating experiences for mothers and fathers. Elsewhere in the media, by the way, there was buzz about babies in the womb tasting things, and generally speaking babies developing in the womb are a marvel to behold.

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, however, Democrats have become obsessed with abortion, growing increasingly radical in their demand for unfettered access to this barbarous form of “healthcare” in which only one of two patients makes it out alive. Democrats claim abortion “rights” are a winning issue for them, and, unfortunately, they may be right given the anger they stoke among women.

Plus they’ll do anything to not have to talk about the economy or any of Joe Biden’s various disasters.

Hence, Abrams is out with her anti-science garbage. Her strategy is targeting Republican-controlled states (like her own) with heartbeat laws protecting children in utero after a heartbeat can be detected, which happens around six weeks.

Fortunately, media fact-checkers jumped in to set things straight. Or not.

“FWIW, ‘fetal heartbeat’ is a misnomer,” tweeted The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler. “The ultrasound picks up electrical activity generated by an embryo. The so-called ‘heartbeat’ sound you hear is created by the ultrasound. Not until 10 weeks can the opening and closing of cardiac valves be detected by a Doppler machine.” Kessler is “scientifically and medically incorrect,” according to radiologist Pradheep J. Shanker.

Kessler also wrote a “fact-check” this week on whether it’s true that Democrats support abortion “up until the moment of birth,” though somehow on that question he totally avoided making a final judgment while still accusing Republicans of being “disingenuous” for things they did not, in fact, even say.

What a hack.

Kessler is one of many media/activist examples of trying to “clarify” the subject by completely muddying the waters on what constitutes a heart, what the sound is, etc.

Well, how about Planned Parenthood? Its website has information about a fetus at five to six weeks, including “a very basic beating heart.” Scratch that. For some reason, Planned Parenthood’s website no longer includes that information.

Speaking of Planned Parenthood, though, its long-overdue 2020-2021 annual report (covering FY2020) finally came out, and the nation’s largest abortion mill terminated more preborn babies than ever —383,460 abortions were performed in FY2020, up from 354,871 the year prior. Meanwhile, its other health services were down, and abortions now outnumber breast screenings (not mammograms, which Planned Parenthood does not provide). And for an organization promoting “choice,” there’s really only one choice: There were only 1,940 adoption referrals that same year, down from 2,667 the prior year and 4,279 the year before that.

The trends at Planned “Parenthood” are certainly striking.

But the real problem, at least according to abortion zealot and general wokescold Elizabeth Warren, is pro-life clinics. In a letter this week to Heartbeat International, Warren and several other Democrat senators expressed “concerns” about “sensitive health information” collected after “luring pregnant people” (note: not just women) who are supposedly duped by “a variety of false and misleading tactics” at the hands of pro-life ministries. We can’t seem to recall her complaining about false and misleading claims about Planned Parenthood and, say, mammograms.

Nevertheless, Warren’s teammates at Time Magazine had a profile on her intrepid efforts the very next day, complete with the requisite hand-wringing over the looming threat of the pro-life cause. No evidence is provided by either Democrats or Time of any wrongdoing on the part of pro-lifers, but they strongly insinuate that’s no proof of innocence.

To bring this full circle, the only people who have no need whatsoever to prove their innocence are babies in the womb. Yet those are precisely the people Democrats are most eager to deny and eliminate, the truth and the science be damned.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.