What a pregnancy actually looks like before 10 weeks - in pictures

[ItsjustMe]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/18/pregnancy-weeks-abortion-tissue


Abortion is now banned or severely restricted in 14 states in the US, the outcome of a decades-long campaign by anti-abortion advocates. In many states, abortion is no longer seen as a health procedure, but a morality issue. Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano – once a state senator, now running for governor – is one of a number of Republican politicians who has called for murder charges for people who defy abortion bans.

In 13 of those 14 states, abortion is banned even in the earliest stages of pregnancy.

These images, supplied to us by the MYA Network, a network of clinicians and activists who came together earlier in the pandemic when some states tried to deem abortion as “non-essential” medical care, show what tissue in the first nine weeks of pregnancy actually looks like.

Six weeks of pregnancy.

[milestogo]

1. Well, it looks like those should have full constitutional rights.

[chowder66]

13. lol

[Ocelot II]

2. This is an oak forest:

[SergeStorms]

3. But there's a hearbeat!

It's no one else's choice but the woman's. It's certainly not the choice of a bunch of old white men.

[calimary]

4. ... even though there's not even a heart yet.

Not even anything close.

[SergeStorms]

21. Exactly.

But no one lies like the religious-right. Well, Trump is the king of lies, but the religious-right is a distant second.

[duhneece]

5. Since we can get heart cells to beat in a Petri dish...

it doesn’t mean much.


https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/07/beating-human-heart-tissue-grown-in-lab-video.html

[SergeStorms]

22. Very interesting.

Thanks for posting that Denise. I'd never seen that before.

Is that what the religious-right is squawking about when they're claiming there's a heartbeat at 6 weeks? That's very disingenuous, but it's certainly not the first time they've done something like that.

[duhneece]

23. Their 'heartbeat' argument fails all around

Heart cells beating in a Petri dish is one.
One can have a healthy heart but if you’re brain dead, they (usually?) pull the plug.

[Chakaconcarne]

11. Or maybe electrical impulses translated by the ultrasound machine?

[Pinback]

14. That's exactly what it is, as Stacey Abrams recently explained

Podcast host Kara Swisher took Abrams to task over the Georgia gubernatorial candidate's statement of this scientific reality, which Swisher claimed negates prospective mothers' joy over a "heartbeat" at 6 weeks:
https://www.audacy.com/podcast/on-with-kara-swisher-c5970/episodes/will-stacey-abrams-finally-win-a12fd

[Marthe48]

26. I read that the ultrasound machine makes the noise

no heartbeat until further along.

[CaptainTruth]

6. Wow, very informative, thanks for posting!

[tblue37]

7. Why aren't such images part of the pro-choice argument? I had no idea, and I am

sure most people are equally clueless about what the first 9 weeks look like. I bet those 6-week bans would never be accepted if people saw these images.

[Lonestarblue]

8. Several more photos in the article. All are enlightening.

The forced birth group has lied for decades about what a six-week fetus looks like, deliberately showing photos from much later in a pregnancy.

[SoBlueInFL]

9. The so-called pro-life crowd loves to make people think that pregnancies r/o

produce things that look like king cake babies from the very first week. It's a joke and highly misleading.

[Farmer-Rick]

10. More people need to see

These petri dish clumps of cells.

But compare these clumps to the image they give you on most of the internet. They show fingers and toes, easily discernable arms and legs, a torso and a stomach. Scroll down this link to see the imaginary fetus. https://www.babycenter.com/pregnancy/week-by-week/10-weeks-pregnant

They are full of crap.

[The Jungle 1]

12. Why do Christians think it is OK to shove their religion on others

The Jewish perspective is that the activation of the fetus’s status as a human occurs upon birth. At the first breath.
Why can't a Jew still get an abortion?????
NAACP we need you.

[wnylib]

16. There are several Jewish challenges to anti abortion laws in the courts

https://tennesseelookout.com/2022/08/26/jewish-congregations-mount-legal-challenges-to-state-abortion-bans/

[The Jungle 1]

24. Thanks for the info I was not aware.

Also I wrote NAACP and should have called for ACLU help. Don't know where my head was.

[wnylib]

25. I noticed that, but knew what you meant.

I don't feel so bad about my own goofs when I see that others can make them, too. But some of mine are due to autocorrect choosing alternatives to what I type.

[Warpy]

15. Most abortions are done well before the 12 week cutoff point

and none of it looks even remotely human. Still, the antiabortion crazies keep holding up those pictures of baby dolls with ketchup all over them. That's one thing that annoys me the most about antiabortionists, the consistent lying.

[murielm99]

17. Have you ever heard them talk about how

abortion causes breast cancer? That one kills me. My cousin is a doctor and even she can't shut them up.

[kiri]

19. notice the tail

Is this fake news? The tail is not wagging, as in all genuine mammalian fetuses!

Maybe a marsupial?

[Warpy]

20. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny

What else needs to be said?

[Pepsidog]

18. Probably the most important and impactful post I have seen on DU. There must be an effort to educate

the public who incredibly misled when it comes to abortion.