The real problem is all those bullshit US "heartbeat" bills that put a cut-off on abortions at 6 weeks. They also count from LMP. So 6 weeks is just 2 weeks late for your next period. Basically by the time you find out you're pregnant, you can't get an abortion anymore.
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2025
75 points (86.4% liked)
Today I Learned
25289 readers
308 users here now
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Bingo! You figured it out! They know this and it's by design.
Life begins at erection!
Every morning is a new life
See, this is why I'm always so proud to show my wife in the morning. She doesn't seem to get it.
Seem to get it? Um... I would think if she was getting it you would know.
😏
Then give it to her?
Lawd knows I'm trying. Sick right now though so gotta wait
🎶It's a new dawn, it's a new day It's a new life...🎶
Life is stored in the balls
With all that pee??
Does this make any sense? First they define pregnancy to start before conception. Then they go ahead laying out how the baby's body is going to chage fast in the first week?! But there's no body yet! You didn't even have sex?
Does this make any sense?
Of course it does.
Do you want to tell so many people the exact time when you banged her/got banged by him?
Well, maybe you want. Maybe you would even say that you can't tell the day exactly because you did it every night for 3 weeks in a row. But not everybody can, or wants to, talk about these things, for all kinds of reasons.
Therefore a general way is neccessary for determining a date that serves as the begin date, for medical and legal purposes. And this one has worked best so far.
how the baby’s body is going to chage fast in the first week?
You bet, it might be going from not existing to existing, that is some change.
It is really awkward, but it is due to a practicality, it is very easy to pinpoint last menstruation, but very hard to know when conception happened.
And this new calculation adds some arbitrary weeks so they say a normal pregnancy will last up to 10 months. And then they say 10 months is late... Maybe this "article" is AI slop? I'm not an expert on pregnancy, but I'd say a lot in the text is more confusing than proper, practical math... At the end you'd be 9 months pregnant and depending on what paragraph from the article you're referring to, the baby is due any day now... or it's still 4 weeks to go, maybe even more if it's late.
There is no "new calculation". This is how medical professionals have calculated weeks of pregnancy for decades if not centuries. The reason is that it's a lot more reliable than going by date of conception (which is not necessarily the date the parents had sex. Sperm can take days to reach the egg).
Source: I've spent 12 years writing accounting and quality management software for midwives.
You're not wrong about knowing you're not an expert.
None of this is new science
Sure, thanks for all the comments. Sometimes I write stuff before thinking it through. Guess my learning is some day I'll have to look up the proper method of doing it. I still found the article to be very confusing. It's clearly not meant for experts. But unless you're one, the statements there seem to mix what happens after conception and the other timeline so I find it to be confusing to me. But I can read up on it and learn something as well.
Maybe it is not best explained, but the theory is accurate, another link: https://americanpregnancy.org/healthy-pregnancy/week-by-week/pregnancy-week-1-2/
Thanks, that one makes a bit more sense. And I mean the two things, the menstrual period and conception are linked... So there's that 😆
Does this make any sense?
Yes.
First they define pregnancy to start before conception.
That's not what's happening. This is a statistical math problem and the last, reliably known variable is most likely the last period of the person before conception. That doesn't mean they were pregnant before conception. If neither the date of the last period nor the date of conception are known, they use a different method, probably ultrasound picture comparisons, and add a lower number.
Interesting. Thanks.
Menstrual bleeding counts as some kind of abortion then? Or is it meant retroactively only if a fertilization of the egg occurred? 🤔
The latter. This is not about politics but about medicine and it's nothing new. Calculating weeks of pregnancy from the previous menstruation is generally a lot more reliable in predicting the date of birth than calculating from conception.
The mother may not remember the exact day she had sex, she may have had sex multiple times and not know which time led to conception and as an additional hurdle, sperm may need multiple days to to reach the egg so even if she had sex only once and remembers the exact date, that doesn't really help to know when the egg was fertilized.
On the other hand, there is a relatively narrow window (a few days) during a cycle when fertilization is the most likely, so calculating from a known point of reference relative to her cycle gives good results.
There's a few days when it's likely a woman will be fertile. It's like 8 hours of fertility total. The few days allow sperm to be present during that window. It's a miracle anyone gets pregnant
Calculating weeks of pregnancy from the previous menstruation is generally a lot more reliable in predicting the date of birth than calculating from conception.
I needed that clarification. It is for practical medical reasons. Not so much about biological facts. I take from this. Thanks.
The due date is just a guide. In,y abou 10% of births are on the due date.
So? It's not like pregnant women are planning weeks in advance for an exact date to give birth. An estimated due date is exactly that: an estimate. I don't have exact statistics on hand but if I remember correctly, your 10% are even a bit high and it's more like 3% on the exact date. But about 50% are within +/- one week of the original due date and 80% are within +/- two weeks which is pretty good accuracy for a 40 week time span¹. If you adjust based on ultrasound results, you can get even more accurate estimates but the original due date gives you a good timeline when those ultrasounds (and other examinations) should be done.
¹ seriously, try estimating any other 40 week project to within a week with 50% accuracy.
Oh, I get that. The point is that it doesn't really make a difference for the woman or the healthcare delivery if it's out be a few days due to sperm migration or being unsure which activity caused conception to occur.
However, it makes sense from a biological point of view to track the full pregnancy. From egg release onwards. Without egg release, there is no pregnancy. Without fertilization, there is no pregnancy.
It also makes sense to have it be standardized across disciplines. There is no logical reason to change it from its current definition. It's not perfect currently, being an estimate, but it's the closest we have.
However, what is importtfrom a reproductive rights point of view is for people to understand how little time there is to make a giant decision about whether to abort or keep the baby. Often there is just a 2 week window, which in that time there needs to be a doctor's consult and a procedure scheduled, irrespective of work, family, health, study or other commitments. When people hear 6 weeks, they think that's a reasonable time frame to make a big decision and arrange it. When it drops to 2, that's different.