May 17, 2023

In 1993, when I began medical school at Wake Forest University, one of my first courses was embryology, a course in which all medical students learn in painstaking detail the developmental stages of human life, beginning at fertilization. 

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At no time during this class, did the professor ever say, “and at this point, life begins” and never did any student raise the question.  To do so would have indicated a level of seriousness insufficient to complete one’s studies.  It is clear that after fertilization and prior to death, no life changing event occurs, either just before or just after any other specific point in human development.  No one knows better than the physician how human life begins at fertilization and that which resides in the womb is completely human.

Rather than acknowledge the humanity initiated at fertilization, many physicians have adopted a fantasy version of medical science in which, using brute condescension, they claim the unique power to ascertain when life begins, while never actually having the courage to state when that is. For many years, this version of medical science has been spread across the internet, using names of doctors and their impressive sounding organizations, along with complex medical language, all designed to shield these ideas from criticism.

Serving as the volunteer medical director of two South Carolina Crisis Pregnancy Centers, one in the Myrtle Beach  and a second in Charleston, I have become intimately familiar with the extremes to which my colleagues will go to deny what they learned in their first days of medical school, all in order to profit from the tragedy a woman endures with a crisis pregnancy. 

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Money is the root of all evil, and the medical community is using it in tremendous amounts to prevent passage of our state’s heartbeat bill (S474, the Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act) and similar legislation across the country. 

Last June, the Journal of Cardiovascular Development and Disease published, “When does the Human Embryonic Heart Start Beating?” in which a physician and embryology researcher describes in great detail the supporting data that has allowed the dating of embryonic cardiac activity. He concludes, “the first heartbeats of an individual human embryo may be expected to appear during a time span that starts at 20 days after fertilization and ends at 35 days after fertilization.”  At Gottingen University in Germany, medical professor Joerg Maenner, M.D. explains “heartbeat” as “the regular movement that the heart makes as it sends blood around your body.”  It is interesting to note that his chosen definition comes from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, highlighting medical science’s general agreement with the near universal common understanding of heartbeat. Electrical activity which triggers the contractions needed to pump the blood, begins within myocytes, the heart’s muscle cells. 

In an effort to defeat numerous state sponsored heartbeat bills, many likeminded individuals in the media are now working closely with large physician groups to make the relatively new claim that the 4-week-old fetus (6th week of pregnancy) does not really have a heart or heartbeat.  As just the latest front in the methodical battle to dehumanize the fetus, the media is overloaded with supposed news pieces, which promote this claim.    

Found under, “Heartbeat bills: is there a fetal heartbeat at six weeks of pregnancy?” NBC showcases a particularly misinformative opinion piece, beginning with a quote from a pediatric and fetal cardiologist, “While the heart does begin to develop around six weeks, the heart as we know it does not yet exist.” As the heart doesn’t fully develop until after birth with closure of the foramen ovale (a physiologic hole in the fetal heart), the physician’s point appears to be rationalization of abortion even into the first month after delivery.   Following this form of unique medical logic, one would say that a human’s skeletal system, which is not fully developed until the mid-teens, is not composed of bones until the growth plate composed of cartilage changes into solid bone. 

If there is ever a fetal bone bill, NBC will find a pediatric and fetal orthopedist they will quote, “While the bones begin development around 3 weeks, the bones as we know them do not yet exist.” Although, insultingly illogical, this declaration goes unchallenged.

“The correct medical term for what’s observed at this point (6 weeks of pregnancy) is cardiac activity. It’s not until about 10 weeks that there is an actual structure that has 4 tubes and connects to the lungs and major vascular system like we would think of as a heart.”  This comment is presented as that of a professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology.  How cardiac activity can exist without a heart, I do not know.