"Abbott's response is misleading, at best. The law's stipulation banning abortions after six weeks does not necessarily mean six weeks from the incident, in the case of rape or incest victims. Doctors date pregnancies from the first day of the individual's last menstrual cycle not from ovulation or "conception." As a result, under the new Texas law, those seeking abortions have less than six weeks to do so. Abbott attempted to caveat his comments Tuesday by highlighting that "rape is a crime," though the bill has no exception for it. Under SB8, the only possible exemption is for "medical emergency." Otherwise, abortion is prohibited when a fetal heartbeat is detected, though the flickering identified as a fetal heartbeat on an ultrasound at that time is really just electrical activity and the sound is made by the ultrasound machine itself. Even at six weeks, doctors say an ultrasound is not detecting a functional heart. And it's worth noting that the fetal heartbeat used as the abortion cutoff in this bill often occurs before people know they are pregnant. Jennifer Kerns, associate professor at University of California San Francisco and an OB-GYN, told CNN, "Saying that someone has six weeks to access abortion is completely misleading. When we say six weeks pregnant what that actually means is six weeks from the last menstrual period... So it doesn't actually mean the person has been pregnant for six weeks."