Like you, I am a mother by choice. And I am a mother FOR CHOICE. The so-called "fetal heartbeat bill" is nothing short of cruel and unusual punishment. Doctors and scientists have told us time and again that the pulse detected at approximately six weeks from the time a sperm enters the egg is not a heart. It is nothing more than a pulse. It is pumping nothing nowhere as it has nothing to pump and no vessels to pump toward or into. So to call this bill the heartbeat bill is a lie and a manipulation. What's more, fewer than 25% of fertilized embryos ever develop. Most are naturally expelled from a woman's body during the menstrual cycle. The very wisdom of the body knows this is not a baby. This bill has nothing to do with protecting life; its sole purpose is to control women.
I agree with you completely, but want to point out that this ban isn't 6 weeks post-fertilization, but 6 weeks after the first day of the last menstrual period. Because we measure pregnancy in the most confusing way possible, apparently.
Those who support this legislation would for the most part say they are saving the life of a baby and that outweighs in their minds any indignities or difficulties a woman might suffer. We talk past each other. We say mothers will suffer. They say babies will die. Is it too complex to address the issue of "personhood" and the impossibility of determining those parameters indisputably? As Shirley said, fewer than 25% of fertilized embryos ever develop. I get the feeling when I point that out that it doesn't even register with anti-choice people. It's as if they don't even hear the words. We should have pounced on all the "heartbeat" bill rhetoric when it started, repeating loudly and often that there can't be a heartbeat because there isn't a heart. We should have pushed back when the focus was on late term abortions, pointing out that late term abortions were always complicated, often dangerous, and almost always with parents who had been looking forward to their baby. Those concepts have taken root deeply in their brains by now to support their anti-choice position. Much harder to dig out. I keep wondering if aggressively taking on the legal definition of personhood might be worth doing. I certainly feel we're on firm ground arguing it can't be before a brain has developed that is capable of thought. It would allow us to agree with the other side that all people deserve protection, just not all potential people.
I don't think it's fair to say that there wasn't push-back on the "heartbeat" thing. I think that there has consistently been push-back (at least during the period of time that I've been aware of this stuff), but (1) the person who names the bill automatically gets their version of reality put front and center, and (2) medically accurate terminology is really terrible messaging ("embryonic cardiac activity" just doesn't have the same ring to it).
As for the rest, I really don't think there's much value in trying to meet them in the middle. It's been tried. It didn't really work out.
Like you, I am a mother by choice. And I am a mother FOR CHOICE. The so-called "fetal heartbeat bill" is nothing short of cruel and unusual punishment. Doctors and scientists have told us time and again that the pulse detected at approximately six weeks from the time a sperm enters the egg is not a heart. It is nothing more than a pulse. It is pumping nothing nowhere as it has nothing to pump and no vessels to pump toward or into. So to call this bill the heartbeat bill is a lie and a manipulation. What's more, fewer than 25% of fertilized embryos ever develop. Most are naturally expelled from a woman's body during the menstrual cycle. The very wisdom of the body knows this is not a baby. This bill has nothing to do with protecting life; its sole purpose is to control women.
I agree with you completely, but want to point out that this ban isn't 6 weeks post-fertilization, but 6 weeks after the first day of the last menstrual period. Because we measure pregnancy in the most confusing way possible, apparently.
You are correct. Thanks for the correction.
Those who support this legislation would for the most part say they are saving the life of a baby and that outweighs in their minds any indignities or difficulties a woman might suffer. We talk past each other. We say mothers will suffer. They say babies will die. Is it too complex to address the issue of "personhood" and the impossibility of determining those parameters indisputably? As Shirley said, fewer than 25% of fertilized embryos ever develop. I get the feeling when I point that out that it doesn't even register with anti-choice people. It's as if they don't even hear the words. We should have pounced on all the "heartbeat" bill rhetoric when it started, repeating loudly and often that there can't be a heartbeat because there isn't a heart. We should have pushed back when the focus was on late term abortions, pointing out that late term abortions were always complicated, often dangerous, and almost always with parents who had been looking forward to their baby. Those concepts have taken root deeply in their brains by now to support their anti-choice position. Much harder to dig out. I keep wondering if aggressively taking on the legal definition of personhood might be worth doing. I certainly feel we're on firm ground arguing it can't be before a brain has developed that is capable of thought. It would allow us to agree with the other side that all people deserve protection, just not all potential people.
I don't think it's fair to say that there wasn't push-back on the "heartbeat" thing. I think that there has consistently been push-back (at least during the period of time that I've been aware of this stuff), but (1) the person who names the bill automatically gets their version of reality put front and center, and (2) medically accurate terminology is really terrible messaging ("embryonic cardiac activity" just doesn't have the same ring to it).
As for the rest, I really don't think there's much value in trying to meet them in the middle. It's been tried. It didn't really work out.