Stacey Abrams, the mid-list romance author known as Selena Montgomery — and more famously Georgia’s defeated Democratic gubernatorial candidate, who in 2018 lost to Republican Brian Kemp but insisted the election was stolen — is once again down in the polls but soaring in the headlines.
Abrams, though raised pro-life and until age 30 a strong believer in protections for the unborn, has sharply pivoted her beliefs to the pro-abortion camp and made abortion on demand until birth a top issue of her campaign against Kemp in this year’s Georgia governor’s race.
Speaking at a panel event at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center in Atlanta on Wednesday, Abrams raised eyebrows when she denied the existence of fetal heartbeats, suggesting the heartbeat detected by an ultrasound at six weeks of pregnancy is a “manufactured sound.”
“There is no such thing as a heartbeat at six weeks,” said Abrams in the video that went viral following her comments. “It is a manufactured sound designed to convince people that men have a right to take control of a woman’s body.”
Abrams was likely taking aim at Georgia House Bill 481, known as the “Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act.” The bill was passed by the Georgia Legislature and signed into law by Governor Kemp in 2019, effectively outlawing abortions upon the detection of a fetal heartbeat, which can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.
As the bill states, “It shall be the policy of the State of Georgia to recognize the presence of a fetal heartbeat as the point of ‘fetal viability,’ creating a compelling state interest to protect ‘the independent essence of the second life’ as an ‘object of state protection’ from abortion; and It shall be the policy of the State of Georgia to recognize unborn children as natural persons who qualify for state income tax deductions and state population based determinations….”
Georgia’s “Heartbeat Law” is among dozens of laws enacted in the wake of the June 24 Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade, a ruling that for nearly half a century legalized a woman’s “right” to an abortion on the federal level. Since June’s historic ruling, states have begun to introduce both new laws and reactivate dormant laws to ensure bans or restrictions increase protections for the unborn.
Critics of Abrams, including U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), political commentator Liz Wheeler, and former host of The View Meghan McCain, have accused of her “trying to change science” and called her “deranged” and “sick” for her comments, which seem to be taking to task the very definition of “heartbeat,” the definition of which Planned Parenthood conveniently revised in late August during the height of debate around abortion access following the overturning of Roe.
Graham, who introduced a 15-week abortion ban in Congress, responded to Abrams’ remarks, telling Fox’s Martha MacCallum that “the unborn child has a human right at a certain point in time not to be dismembered. It’s not a state issue for me, it’s a human rights issue … and the public’s with me. Seventy percent of the people would like to have limits on late-term abortion.”
Graham continued, “What she’s doing is marginalizing the unborn child to justify aborting it up to the moment of birth. In her world, in the Democratic Party’s view of abortion, there are no restrictions; abortion up to the moment of birth is what they believe.”
“The only way they can sell abortion on demand up to the moment of birth is to marginalize the unborn child to be something, some glob. It is a developing person.”
Independent media outlet OutKick founder Clay Travis took to Twitter, writing, “Stacey Abrams just flat out lying here about not being able to see a baby’s heartbeat on an ultrasound. Yikes. This is one of many reasons she’s getting trounced in Georgia. She’s run a disaster of a campaign.”
Abrams seemed to be advancing the talking points of new guidance provided by Planned Parenthood, which now differentiates between a “heartbeat” and “cardiac activity” at six weeks of pregnancy. As reported by Fox News, the organization’s new definition claims “electrical activity” detected on a vaginal ultrasound is actually there to “mimic” a heartbeat, but is not a real human heartbeat.
According to Planned Parenthood’s website, an ultrasound scan “builds a picture of the embryo or fetus as it develops … by bouncing sound waves into your uterus.” But nowhere does the agency describe an ultrasound’s ability to detect a heartbeat or electrical activity.
Per Planned Parenthood, depending on when it is done during pregnancy, an ultrasound may:
- confirm your due date
- find certain abnormalities
- find multiple pregnancies
- measure the length of your cervix
- show the position and size of the fetus
- show the position of the placenta
“Ultrasound is a very safe procedure — no x-rays are involved. Between 11 and 13 weeks of pregnancy, some providers combine a blood test with a special kind of ultrasound.”
Abrams’ comments follow a recent interview she gave on The View, in which she expressed support for abortions “until the time of birth” in some cases.
“Abortion is a medical decision, not a political decision,” she told The View. “Arbitrary, politically-defined timelines are deeply problematic because they ignore the reality of medical and physiological issues.”
Some doctors agree with Abrams’ claims. Dr. Nisha Verma, of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told NPR that the term “fetal heartbeat” was “misleading.”
“At six weeks of gestation, those valves don’t exist,” Verma explained. “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.”
That any American is buying these falsehoods and allowing the Left to make headway by manipulating language overnight to support their radical and extreme positions is truly unconscionable. Do we no longer have the ability to discern truth from lies? Is any outrageous scientific assertion automatically considered a possible truth?
For decades, ultrasounds have been a tried-and-true method for determining a baby’s heartbeat, but suddenly the purpose of the procedure is altered to fit the Left’s narrative to promote abortion on demand.
It’s time for the American people to use their brains and dismiss this nonsense, and state openly and courageously that the heartbeat seen on an ultrasound is not an electrical impulse but the heartbeat of a child.
