As I recently explained, Planned Parenthood has abandoned its unscientific claims about early development of the fetal heart. Planned Parenthood admitted that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) was wrong to claim in both its “Guide to Language and Abortion” and many amicus briefs that “a fetal heartbeat exists only after the chambers of the heart have developed and can be detected via ultrasound, which typically occurs around 17 to 20 weeks’ gestation.” The fetal heart, Planned Parenthood belatedly admitted in a footnote, “forms earlier than that.”
ACOG’s error was egregious. As a matter of medical fact, the heart’s four chambers “form by the end of week 7.” And ACOG’s error misled courts. For instance, the chief justice’s opinion in a 3–2 decision by the South Carolina supreme court striking down that state’s previous heartbeat law cited ACOG’s Guide to assert that “[t]he chambers of the heart do not develop until a fetus is at least at seventeen to twenty weeks of gestation, at which point, a true heartbeat can be detected.” This is flat-out wrong. ACOG knows it was wrong — that’s why it recently deleted its grossly inaccurate claim from its website and Guide. But as far as I can tell, it never admitted or took responsibility for its error.
This brings us to ACOG’s shiny new amicus brief, filed this week in another round of Iowa litigation. ACOG’s old Iowa amicus brief said that “as a matter of medical science, a fetal heartbeat exists only after the chambers of the heart have developed and can be detected via ultrasound, which typically occurs around 17 to 20 weeks’ gestation.” ACOG cited its March 2022 Guide, which said the same while admonishing “people writing about reproductive health to use language that is medically appropriate, clinically accurate, and without bias.”
So what does ACOG tell the Iowa supreme court this time around? That it made an ideologically motivated mistake and misled the court last time? No, instead it first proclaims itself “a leading provider of authoritative scientific data.” Then, again attacking Iowa law’s (medically accurate) reference to the “fetal heartbeat” as “arbitrary,” ACOG replaces its claim about 17-20 weeks with this meaningless statement: “as a matter of medical science, fetal cardiac development is extremely complex and continues throughout pregnancy.” Everything about human fetal development is “extremely complex,” and ACOG makes no effort to address the scientific facts about early fetal heart development that even Planned Parenthood now admits (see Part II of this brief filed with the Iowa supreme court).
Worst of all, what does ACOG now cite to support its claim about cardiac development? The same March 2022 “ACOG Guide to Language and Abortion” that contains the wrong assertion about 17-20 weeks. In other words, ACOG — represented by an international law firm — continues to point the Iowa supreme court to facts that it knows are not true. Far from admitting its mistake, ACOG seems intent on misleading the court once again. Given these repeated episodes, no one can pretend that ACOG offers “authoritative scientific data.”