The text of the Texas law claims that 'fetal heartbeat has become a key medical predictor that an unborn child will reach live birth' and continues, 'the pregnant woman has a compelling interest in knowing the likelihood of her unborn child surviving to full-term birth based on the presence of cardiac activity.'īut obstetricians say that's not how this information is used by health care providers. What cardiac activity means - and doesn't mean - early in pregnancy Since then, over a dozen states have passed similar laws, but Texas' is the first to go into effect. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks reproductive health policy, the first such law was passed in North Dakota in 2013, but it was struck down in the courts.

The term 'fetal heartbeat' has been used in laws restricting access to abortion for years. That sound 'usually can't be heard with our Doppler machines until about 10 weeks.' Later in a pregnancy is when a clinician might use the term 'fetal heartbeat,' after the sound of the heart valves can be heard, she says. 'In no way is this detecting a functional cardiovascular system or a functional heart.' 'What we're really detecting is a grouping of cells that are initiating some electrical activity,' she explains. Jennifer Kerns, an OB-GYN and associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco. That's why 'the term 'fetal heartbeat' is pretty misleading,' says Dr. 'The flickering that we're seeing on the ultrasound that early in the development of the pregnancy is actually electrical activity, and the sound that you 'hear' is actually manufactured by the ultrasound machine.' 'At six weeks of gestation, those valves don't exist,' she explains.

The sound generated by an ultrasound in very early pregnancy is quite different, she says. Nisha Verma, an OB-GYN who specializes in abortion care and works at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. 'When I use a stethoscope to listen to an patient's heart, the sound that I'm hearing is caused by the opening and closing of the cardiac valves,' says Dr. Jennifer Kerns, OB-GYN, University of California, San Francisco In no way is this detecting a functional cardiovascular system or a functional heart. What we're really detecting is a grouping of cells that are initiating some electrical activity.

The law defines 'fetal heartbeat' as 'cardiac activity or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart within the gestational sac' and claims that a pregnant woman could use that signal to determine 'the likelihood of her unborn child surviving to full-term birth.'īut the medical-sounding term 'fetal heartbeat' is being used in this law - and others like it - in a misleading way, say physicians who specialize in reproductive health. The Texas abortion law that went into effect last fall reads: 'A physician may not knowingly perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman if the physician detected a fetal heartbeat for the unborn child.' Supreme Court intends to ovterturn Roe v. Note: We are republishing this story after the news site Politico published a leaked draft opinion suggesting the U.S. And the sound that you 'hear' is actually manufactured by the ultrasound machine. What the ultrasound machine detects in an embryo at six weeks of pregnancy is actually just electrical activity from cells that aren't yet a heart. The term 'fetal heartbeat,' as used in the anti-abortion law in Texas, is misleading and not based on science, say physicians who specialize in reproductive health.

Normal heartbeat of fetus