Timelapse photos of tissue from the early stages of pregnancy have gone viral on social media, especially since it came at a time when the United States abortion laws are in the limelight as America awaits the first nationwide election final results following the overturning of Roe v Wade by the Supreme Court, June this year.
Jessica Valenti, an abortion rights commentator, shared a timelapse of photos showing what tissue during the first 5 to 9 weeks of pregnancy looks like on TikTok. It has since gone viral, with 207,000 views, as of this writing.
The public is divided on the truthfulness of the photos, with some saying that the pictures are fake unless their early sonogram had lied to them, while some confirmed the accuracy as what they saw when they had a miscarriage or an emergency abortion was the same as the photos.
Photos to help women make the right decisions
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found in 2019 that 80 percent of abortions happen within the first nine weeks of pregnancy.
Dr. Joan Fleischman, the co-founder of the MYA abortion care network, provided the photos expressing that despite the "innocuous appearance" of the tissues, they did not produce the images to attribute meaning to the tissues.
"We know that ending a pregnancy or going through a miscarriage is often highly emotional. As clinicians, we believe that it's important to provide accurate information to our patients about what is actually going on in their bodies so that they can make decisions that are right for them," Dr. Fleischman explained.
She further declared that discussions about abortion lack "medically accurate imagery," along with the necessary medical care that must be available in ordinary people's lives.
MYA network released the photos to counter misinformation about pregnancy tissue, hoping to provide the public with better resources and references to make informed decisions.
Abortion issue motivated people to vote
The abortion care network further explained that the tissue came from real women whose pregnancies were removed due to early abortion or miscarriages in a clinic through manual vacuum aspiration. The tissues were rinsed so that blood and menstrual lining were removed for the photos.
Dr. Fleischman stated that she has been doing manual vacuum aspiration for 25 years in her practice, describing the procedure as "a very gentle way" to remove tissue in the early stages of pregnancy. The "delicate" process of extracting the tissue keeps it intact.
The tissue seen at this early stage of pregnancy is named the gestational sac, which contains the cells that can potentially become a fetus as the pregnancy progresses. At this early stage, Dr. Fleischman stressed that no embryo is visible.
A recent poll by Monmouth University revealed that American voters regarded abortion as one of the most crucial issues for the federal government to take action on, prioritized over gun control and climate change.
A professor of family and gender law at Boston University's School of Law, Linda McClain, told Newsweek that one of the concerns that motivated voters at the polls is to protect abortion access as a right and a reproductive health service for every American woman.
In fact, for some voters, it was the most important issue for them. This can be the reason a strong number of young people also turned out to vote, McClain declared.
