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.”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.
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.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.
“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.
Those photographs, of course, show only fragments of the gestational sac. The actual fetus/embryo looks like this: As to fetal heartbeat, it begins at 21 days post fertilisation (5 weeks post LMP):