Physicians Share Photos of Early Pregnancy Tissue: 'We Just Want People to Have Accurate Information
(I thought it was time to repost this handy little reminder)
Physicians Share Photos of Early Pregnancy Tissue: ‘We Just Want People to Have Accurate Information’
11/4/2022 by Carrie N. Baker
Anti-abortion rhetoric and images saturating the internet and political discussions portray embryos in early pregnancy as fully formed miniature human beings. Recently enacted abortion bans refer to embryos as “babies” and claim there’s a “fetal heartbeat” at six weeks of pregnancy. But what does an early pregnancy actually look like? The MYA Network (short for “My Abortion Network”) set out to answer this question in their recent Issue of Tissue Project, which shows what tissue removed during early abortions looks like. The MYA Network is composed of clinicians working to expand early abortion options in primary care settings using abortion pills and manual uterine aspiration. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there and many people have come to believe it,” said MYA Network co-founder Dr. Michele Gomez, a family care physician in Burlingame, Calif. “There’s also accurate information out there but mostly in the form of highly magnified embryos at these early stages. People have a right to know and understand that they are magnified.”
In fact, before nine weeks of pregnancy—when 80 percent of abortions take place—the embryo is not visible with the naked eye in the pregnancy tissue removed during an abortion. There is no “heartbeat” at six weeks of pregnancy, only the electrical activity of cells before an actual heart is formed, said Gomez. “The anti-choice movement has been showing inaccurate and graphic pictures for a long time, and these images shock us so they tend to stick with us,” said Gomez. “Without factual images to counter the inaccurate images, many people just accept the only things they’ve ever seen, which is completely understandable. Seeing actual images of early pregnancy tissue, as seen with the naked eye, can help people replace the graphic and inaccurate images they may have come to accept as true.”
MYA Network created the Issue of Tissue Project to share accurate images of early pregnancy tissue. After manual aspiration abortions, they rinsed the blood from the tissue removed from the uterus and photographed it for pregnancies of five weeks through nine weeks.
These photos show pregnancy tissue extracted at five to nine weeks of pregnancy, rinsed of blood and menstrual lining. The images show the tissue in a petri dish next to a ruler to indicate its size. (MYA Network)
After an egg joins with a sperm at fertilization, it’s called a zygote. After five days of development, it’s called a blastocyst. In week four of the pregnancy, the blastocyst embeds in the uterine wall and becomes an embryo. At around the 10th week of pregnancy it becomes a fetus. Up to 50 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. In the MYA Network pregnancy tissue photos, the embryos are too small to see with the naked eye. At five weeks of pregnancy, the tissue is about one quarter of an inch wide.
Pregnancy tissue at five weeks of pregnancy. (MYA Network)
At six weeks of pregnancy, the tissue is a little over half an inch.
Pregnancy tissue at six weeks of pregnancy. (MYA Network)
At seven weeks of pregnancy, the tissue is one inch wide.
Tissue at seven weeks of pregnancy. (MYA Network)
At eight weeks of pregnancy, the tissue is two and a half inches wide.
Tissue at eight weeks of pregnancy (MYA Network)
At nine weeks of pregnancy, the tissue is about three inches wide.
Tissue at nine weeks of pregnancy. (MYA Network)
Gomez said the MYA Network’s decision to share these images grew from their own experiences as clinicians. “Many of us in the MYA Network provide in-office abortions by manual uterine aspiration, which a simple, non-surgical procedure that takes five to 10 minutes to complete and can be done with only ibuprofen for pain control,” she said. “We’ve often had the experience of a patient asking to see the pregnancy tissue after the procedure, and then being very surprised by what they see. “In my experience, pregnant people and their partners have felt some relief when they see the tissue, because it doesn’t look like what they’ve seen in anti-choice imagery,” Gomez continued. “We in the MYA Network discussed this, and decided that as clinicians we wanted our patients to have more information, so they could be better informed.”
. . . .
“A lot of people are comforted by seeing these images—they’re just so different from what they’d previously seen,” said Gomez. “People need and deserve facts, love and compassion to make decisions about their own bodies and their own lives.”
To learn more or support the work of the MYA Network, visit myanetwork.org/ (https://myanetwork.org/).
https://msmagazine.com/2022/11/04/early-pregnancy-tissue-fetus-baby-abortion-bans/