tailgater wrote:
The unborn child has a heartbeat. How many woman who get an abortion know this? How many saw it on an ultrasound? Or listened to it before flushing out of her womb?
Keep it legal, but keep it honest.
Maybe they should be forced to listen to the heartbeat, or see the tiny unborn child. You want to call it a fetus instead? OK. Listen to the heartbeat of the living fetus in the womb before they use surgical instruments to suck out the brain.
Ok, I was gonna keep quiet because there's nothing dumber than a bunch of old white guys arguing over what rights a woman should have.
but this is incorrect, and there's nothing I dislike more than inaccuracies.
Fetal heart development starts at the earliest at 6 weeks. This means some abortions could occur when there is a heartbeat HOWEVER (and this is where people tend to get lost, in the details, also this is why people who are idiots and unable to understand complex concepts, shouldn't be allowed to make decisions) this is not a heart in the same way you think of one. It actually resembles a fish heart, as it hasn't developed the multiple chambers. So if you're going to start claiming a heartbeat is some indicator of a need to not have an abortion, you shouldn't be killing fish either. It isn't until the end of the first trimester that an actual heart has developed.
But, lets start at a more basic question.
Who cares when the heartbeat begins?
The heart was historically a determination of life, simply because we weren't smart enough to have figured out the value of the brain, and we didn't have the tools/equipment necessary to measure brain activity. We only knew that if the heart stopped, the person died. Hell, the same thing will happen if your liver stops. Heart function is not in any way tied to human life. A person can still be a person with something else pumping their blood (I believe this has been proven).
If the anti-abortion ass-clowns out there want to tie life to something, they should at least drag themselves into the current century and identify brain activity.