THE PRESS IS FALLING FOR ANTI-ABORTION “FETAL HEARTBEAT” PROPAGANDA

Reporters are parroting — and spreading — sentimental falsehoods.

Judith Levine
May 27 2023

“ONCE A FETAL heartbeat could be detected, typically around the sixth week of pregnancy … ”

When I read this phrase in the New Yorker, referring to Texas’s first abortion ban, I shot off a letter to the editor. “This is misleading,” I wrote. “There is no heartbeat at six weeks because the fetus does not yet have a heart. As San Francisco OB-GYN Dr. Jennifer Kerns told NPR: ‘What we’re really detecting is a grouping of cells that are initiating some electrical activity. In no way is this detecting a functional cardiovascular system or a functional heart.’” I noted that “a six-week fetus is about the size and shape of a baked bean.”

Continued:  https://theintercept.com/2023/05/27/abortion-fetal-heartbeat-propaganda-press-coverage/


Doctors weren’t considered in Dobbs, but now they’re on abortion’s legal front lines

July 3, 2022
Selena Simmons-Duffin

Historically, doctors have played a big role in abortion's legality. Back in the 1860s, physicians with the newly-formed American Medical Association worked to outlaw abortion in the U.S.

A century later, they were doing the opposite.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/07/03/1109483662/doctors-werent-considered-in-dobbs-but-now-theyre-on-abortions-legal-front-lines


Roe v Wade: an anti-abortion film of staggering ineptitude

Rightwing faces, including Jon Voight, Stacey Dash and Tomi Lahren, join forces for a shoddy new drama purporting to tell the truth behind a major ruling

Robert Daniels
Thu 25 Mar 2021

Nick Loeb and Cathy Allyn believe you’ve been lied to about the landmark supreme court case Roe v Wade – a decision that protected a woman’s right to choose. In a controversial new movie named after the trial, the co-directors want to explain how decision was rigged; how a Jewish doctor (Loeb is of Jewish descent himself) leveraged abortion into a money making scheme; how the abortion rights advocate Lawrence Lader (Jamie Kennedy) concocted a plan to puppeteer two inexperienced female lawyers to prey on a supposedly desperate bumpkin in Norma McCorvey (Summer Joy Campbell) – the Roe in Roe v Wade – to weaponize her to an unsuspecting court system. And they want to spew this deeply biased anti-abortion malarkey as inartfully as possible.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/mar/24/roe-v-wade-anti-abortion-rightwing


USA – Shock, Gore, and More: ‘Unplanned’ Recycles Timeworn Tropes of Anti-Choice Films

Shock, Gore, and More: ‘Unplanned’ Recycles Timeworn Tropes of Anti-Choice Films
Anti-abortion films spread misinformation and build a world that is distinctly white, Christian, and conservative.

Apr 5, 2019
Steph Herold & Gretchen Sisson

The anti-abortion film Unplanned quietly snuck into fourth place at the box office last weekend, grossing more than $6 million and drawing claims that it will be anti-abortion advocates’ Schindler’s List: “We are the hope, and this movie is our battle cry,” said one.

Unplanned is based on the memoir of Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned anti-abortion activist. Johnson claims she had a change of heart after witnessing an ultrasound-guided abortion and abruptly quit her job; others have consistently challenged Johnson’s account of events. Regardless, the movie takes Johnson’s conversion as true, holding her up as the relatable, redemptive heroine.

Continued: https://rewire.news/article/2019/04/05/shock-gore-and-more-unplanned/