An international alliance of medical experts has accused the BBC of using “medically inaccurate” and biased “dangerously emotive” language after the corporation refused to stop describing US legislation seeking to ban access in some states to legal abortions after six weeks as a “heartbeat bill”.
The phrase helps “weaponise” descriptions of abortions, claim a group of family planning specialists that includes Marie Stopes International, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics.
They wrote recently to the corporation to request it stop using the term, claiming it is “at odds” with the BBC’s editorial standards and royal charter that “require the corporation to treat subjects with ‘due impartiality’”.
The alliance’s letter, seen by the Guardian, said: “Anti-abortionists coined the phrase in a clear attempt to frame the debate on their own emotional and empathetic terms.
“As an international broadcaster with a global weekly reach in 2018 of 376 million people, [the BBC] … has a duty to avoid being complicit, however unknowingly, in the aggressive campaign by anti-abortion extremists worldwide attempting to rob women of their rights and care.”
It also said the term “heartbeat bill” was “medically inaccurate. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has made this clear; there is no detectable heartbeat at six weeks.
“Adding the words ‘so-called’ or placing the phrase in parentheses will not address this bias; only a commitment to its removal from BBC coverage of abortion from now on can restore the balance the corporation rightly demands and expects of itself.”
The BBC’s director of news and current affairs, Fran Unsworth, said in response: “We would not aim to adopt it as our own description of the legislation … I’m afraid that I disagree with you when you suggest that we should cease using the expression entirely.
“I do not think our reporting can avoid the fact that the phrase is now in common usage. We will continue to place ‘heartbeat bill’ in quotation marks or to attribute it, but our overall aim will always be to try to explain the precise nature of the bill, rather than rely on shorthand coined by others.”
The director general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Dr Alvaro Bermejo, urged the BBC to “think again”. He said the BBC could not “concede ‘heartbeat bill’ is a biased and medically inaccurate description and then say it’s going to use it anyway”.
Bermejo said: “Saying it is ‘in common usage’ is no excuse, especially when the BBC … shares the blame for spreading it.”
Which states have enacted the strictest abortion bans?
Missouri’s move to close its last abortion clinic, after already outlawing the procedure past eight weeks, and the near total abortion ban in Alabama have put the states passing the most restrictive laws under the spotlight.
Abortion in the United States remains legal in all 50 states. The new laws recently passed in a number of states have not yet come into force and may never do so, being subject to court challenges from pro-choice entities.
State laws that ban abortion eight weeks into a pregnancy or sooner are unconstitutional.
They go against the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling from the US supreme court that triggered the legalization of abortion nationwide. Anti-abortion campaigners hope court challenges will ultimately prompt the now-conservative leaning court to reconsider the ruling.
The Roe landmark bestowed the right of a woman to seek an abortion up to the point of fetal viability outside the womb, which is widely considered to be between 24 and 28 weeks. In reality, some states have already made obtaining an abortion almost impossible for many, by chipping away at women’s rights and services in a sustained legal and religious crusade in recent decades.
These are the states that have passed the most restrictive laws in 2019, and two earlier vanguards:
Alabama
Alabama’s Republican-controlled state senate in mid-May passed a near-total ban on abortion, making it a crime to perform the procedure – at any stage of pregnancy. The ban is the strictest in the US, and allows an exception only when the woman’s health is deemed to be at serious risk. The measure contains no exception for rape or incest, and the state governor signed it into law days later, before a court challenge by Planned Parenthood.
Ohio
Stringent restrictions were passed in Ohio in April, banning the procedure after detection of embryonic cardiac activity, ie at around six weeks, when many don’t yet know they’re pregnant.
Known as “fetal heartbeat” legislation, the title is a mischaracterization. At this early stage a woman is carrying an embryo with a throbbing cell cluster, that’s not yet termed a fetus with a recognizable heart.
Republican governor Mike DeWine broke with his predecessor to sign the law, a long-sought victory for extremist activists such as Janet Porter.
Kentucky
Kentucky also passed a six-week ban, in March, which governor Matt Bevin signed, capping off a session that saw several pieces of anti-abortion legislation passed in the state, only to be met by lawsuits.
As in several other states, the bill was accompanied by impassioned and sometimes angry arguments from both sides, and faced immediate legal challenges, in this case from the ACLU, which described it as “blatantly unconstitutional”.
Mississippi
Governor Phil Bryant signed a similar bill into law in Mississippi, amid ceremony at the capitol, also in March and again banning abortion effectively after six weeks.
Saying the legislation showed “the profound respect and desire of Mississippians to protect the sanctity of that unborn life whenever possible” and was for the sake of “the physical and mental health of the mother”, Bryant walked into a prompt court challenge.
It gave no exceptions for rape or incest, and doctors performing abortion faced suspension of their license.
Georgia
When Georgia passed its version of the six-week ban in May, it capped weeks of protests in Atlanta and sparked yet another court battle.
Governor Brian Kemp said he was signing the bill “to ensure that all Georgians have the opportunity to live, grow, learn and prosper in our great state”.
In a challenge, Sean Young, legal director of the ACLU of Georgia, said: “Every federal court that has heard a challenge to a similar ban has ruled that it’s unconstitutional.”
Louisiana
Protesters may have dressed up as handmaids, but Louisiana still overwhelmingly enshrined the misnamed “fetal heartbeat” bill in late May. It’s expected to be signed by governor John Bel Edwards, even as the only governor in the deep south who’s a Democrat, despite opposition at national party level.
Abortion has been prohibitively difficult in the state for decades. Louisiana already has more than 1,000 medically unnecessary requirements regarding the procedure, according to the ACLU, and just three clinics left.
Missouri
Days before the state moved in late May to shut down its last abortion clinic, which would make it the only state without one, Missouri had already passed an eight-week abortion ban for the state.
The legislation includes an exception for medical emergencies threatening a woman’s health, but not for rape or incest. Doctors in Missouri could face five to 15 years in prison for performing an abortion after eight weeks.
North Dakota and Iowa
North Dakota pioneered the so-called “fetal heartbeat” style bill when it passed legislation in 2013 to ban abortion once any cardiac activity is detected in the embryo.
This made the state the strictest in the US at that time. Iowa recently passed a similar bill, in 2018. Both were blocked by the courts but remain on the books, dormant, so if Roe v Wade was overturned by the supreme court, these and many others of the extreme laws struck down prior by lower courts would come into force.
The IPPF pointed out that others, including the Guardian, had announced they would avoid using the phrase. Bermejo added: “Language around legal abortion has been weaponised by those who want to deny women access to it and journalists – especially those who work for a news organisation which claims to be impartial and trusted – must wake up and see they are being played.
“This phrase was chosen very carefully by people who want to end access to legal abortion and who are exploiting the mainstream media to insert dangerously emotive language into the common vernacular. The right thing to do is to stop using it. We call on the BBC to think again.”
The BBC declined a request to comment further.
