U.K. Newspaper Takes Pro-Abortion Deception to Next Level

COMMENTARY Life

U.K. Newspaper Takes Pro-Abortion Deception to Next Level

Oct 25, 2022 3 min read
COMMENTARY BY
Emma Waters

Senior Research Associate, Richard and Helen DeVos Center

Emma is a Senior Research Associate in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation.
A scientifically accurate 3D illustration of a human embryo at eight weeks. KATERYNA KON / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

The Guardian published an article suggesting that until 10 weeks of pregnancy, the unborn baby is only white tissue material.

The white tissue shown throughout The Guardian’s article is just the pre-placenta that surrounds the developing, implanted embryo. It’s not the embryo itself.

The Guardian is doing its best to be a faithful stenographer for the pro-abortion lobby. But it can’t hide the truth.

The pro-abortion industrial complex is at it again.

The Guardian, a U.K.-based newspaper that reaches an estimated 8.8 million readers each day across all platforms, on Wednesday published an article suggesting that until 10 weeks of pregnancy, the unborn baby is only white tissue material.

The Guardian article, “What a pregnancy actually looks like before 10 weeks – in pictures,” gives one the impression that it’s going to show what a developing baby looks like in the early stages of pregnancy. Instead, the article only refers to “tissue” or the “gestational sac.” The suggestion, of course, is that this is all a pregnancy is at 10 weeks and less.

So, The Guardian published an entire article about what a pregnancy looks like—all without showing a single picture of the developing baby.

The Guardian relied on a group called the MYA Network, which is short for “My Abortion Network.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, three female doctors formed the My Abortion Network, a self-professed advocacy group to “show what tissue in the first nine weeks of pregnancy actually looks like.”

The Guardian’s link to the group takes you to a welcome page that says:

Do you know what early pregnancies actually look like? You might be surprised to learn that through nine weeks of pregnancy, there is no visible embryo. 

And at six weeks of pregnancy, the so-called ‘heartbeat’ is just electrical activity of cells, before an actual heart is formed. 

Around 85% of all abortions in the U.S. happen before 9 weeks of pregnancy. Our goal is to counter misinformation with facts about what pregnancy tissue looks like in an early abortion or miscarriage.

There’s such depth of deception there. Those doctors claim to show what an early pregnancy looks like, but subtly concede that they’re only addressing “pregnancy tissue” in the last sentence.

Both the My Abortion Network and The Guardian piece pretend to address pregnancy itself, and specifically the unborn human being. Instead, they only address one aspect of pregnancy, the gestational sac. Within this sleight of hand lies the difference between life and death.

So, what is a gestational sac? Simply put, a gestational sac is “a fluid-filled structure surrounding an embryo during the first few weeks of embryonic development.” That’s right. The white tissue shown throughout The Guardian’s article is just the pre-placenta that surrounds the developing, implanted embryo. It’s not the embryo itself.

Nonetheless, The Guardian relies on exclusive quotes from Dr. Joan Fleischman, one of the central advisers of the network. She goes so far as to claim, “This image shows the gestational sac of a nine-week pregnancy. This is everything that would be removed during an abortion and includes the nascent embryo, which is not easily discernible to the naked eye. Showing this tissue can be a relief to patients.”

Both of her claims—that the gestational sac is “everything that would be removed” and that the alluded-to embryo is not “easily discernable to the naked eye”—are false.

At five weeks, the human embryo already looks like a small human with a clearly developing spinal cord, arms, and legs. Live Action, a pro-life advocacy organization, shared a deeply intimate photo of a miscarried baby at five weeks. (Warning: The photo may be too graphic for some readers.) The unborn human being was already the diameter of a quarter in length and looked like a small, swaddled baby.

At nine weeks, thanks to advancements in 3D ultrasounds, countless pictures are available of what a baby looks like in the gestational sac. The late-stage embryo is about the size of a Hershey’s Kiss and has all the developmental features of a small baby.

Yet, The Guardian gives a platform to a doctor who claims the unborn child is not easy to see. If you can see a quarter or a Hershey’s Kiss in your hand, you can see the unborn child at this stage. To claim otherwise is an act of outright deception.

When pro-abortion advocates can’t undermine the popularity of a law, such as the heartbeat law that many states and elected leaders are considering, the next step is to obscure what an unborn human being looks like and redefine a fetal heartbeat along the lines of inanimate “pulsing.”

The Guardian is doing its best to be a faithful stenographer for the pro-abortion lobby. But it can’t hide the truth.

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal