After Stacey Abrams corrects misinformation about a six-week “fetal heartbeat,” Fox’s Will Cain says she's spreading a “QAnon-plus level” conspiracy theory
Medical experts have repeatedly debunked the claim that an embryo has a heartbeat six weeks into a pregnancy
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On the Thursday edition of The Faulkner Focus, Fox host Will Cain responded to Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams debunking the medically inaccurate concept of a prenatal heartbeat at six weeks, attacking Abrams for spreading what he described as a “QAnon-plus level” conspiracy theory.
In late July, a federal court greenlit Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, allowing the restriction to take effect after being stalled in the court system since Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed the law in 2019. Anti-abortion advocates have long called for banning abortion at six weeks of pregnancy, fasely asserting that a “fetal heartbeat” can be detected at that point.
During a panel discussion in Atlanta this week, Abrams addressed Georgia's six-week ban, stating, “There is no such thing as a heartbeat at six weeks. It is a manufactured sound designed to convince people that men have the right to take control of a woman’s body away from her.”
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has spoken out against “heartbeat” legislation, such as the standing law in Georgia, for its deceptive nature:
It is clinically inaccurate to use the word “heartbeat” to describe the sound that can be heard on ultrasound in very early pregnancy. In fact, there are no chambers of the heart developed at the early stage in pregnancy that this word is used to describe, so there is no recognizable “heartbeat.” What pregnant people may hear is the ultrasound machine translating electronic impulses that signify fetal cardiac activity into the sound that we recognize as a heartbeat.