DeSantis passes Trump in latest round of polls...

So I wonder if those who support heart beat bills are OK with 17-20 weeks, because clearly there isn’t a real heartbeat before then. I wonder if anybody in states like TX will challenge the existing laws as interpreted.

 

This is like believing that when a doctor says somebody has a "stomach bug," they literally mean bugs in the stomach. You're trying to pass off a colloquial use of a term doctors use to help people comprehend the significance of something as scientific/medical usage when it is not actually that. Everything in JMDZ's post is correct.

 

The links you gave are all intended for prospective parents, not other doctors.

 

A number of polls have indicated that Ron DeSantis will beaten Trump in a one on one electon. When there are multiple candidates the Orange One usually comes out ahead. First, I think it's way too early to make a prediction keeping in mind that Jeb Bush was the favorite at this point in the 2016 election cycle but more significantly, it's very unlikely that the contest for the 2024 Republican nomination will be one on one. As was the situation in the 2016 there will be multiple candidates who could end up splitting the anti-Trump vote. Ironically, the weaker Trump appears the more likely that other candidates will announce that they are running for the nomination.

 

As was stated multiple times in the other thread, it makes prospective parents super happy to hear it. They don't care about the technical details that this electrical impulse will be regulating the beating of the heart in a few months when the heart has fully developed. Aside from the first ultrasound, this is one of the high points for prospective parents.

Just like the doctor doesn't keep saying you have lateral epicondylitis when you have tennis elbow, or keep telling kids they have contusions when they have a bruise.

 

There really is a regular electrical impulse that we colloquially call a heartbeat months before the heart develops. It makes prospective parents happy to hear the heartbeat, despite being scientifically inaccurate.

The really weird part is that so many people, when informed about the scientific inaccuracy of this colloquial usage, insist that the colloquial is the more correct statement. I haven't been able to figure out why that is.

 

I’m not a medical professional so ultimately I can’t say one way or the other. But there isn’t necessarily an inconsistency there, what they say to non medical professionals isn’t the same thing that is used among medical professionals. So do you think this doctor made all of this stuff up?

 

Actually it isn’t. People cherry pick science all the time, sometimes in a tortured fashion, to reinforce their preferred beliefs. You see it in vaccine conversations and on the other side you see it gender conversations.

 

Besides the fact that it is scientifically incorrect, there are simple organisms that have circulatory systems and “heartbeats”, who cares? This idea of fetal heartbeats being a demarcation line has always seemed totally absurd to me, but we know why they want to do it as it nearly bans abortion totally. We also know why the politicians pander to these folks incessantly or may even fake their positions. It’s a way to distract and lock in reliable votes. Nothing else matters.

A 6 week old fetus is the size of a peanut, many women aren’t even aware that peanut is there at that point. To tell a woman they don’t have control over their own bodies at that stage is nutso. It isn’t logical, and can only be explained by religious indoctrination. Human life isn’t that precious that it needs to be protected at the stage where it’s life stage more resembles a worm (an organism that may have electrical impulses or responds to direct stimuli, but has no “cognition” as we would recognize it). How do these people live with themselves knowing the millions if not billions of living organisms that die every day, many consumed by humans or destroyed to make space for more humans? It makes no sense. I’ve always said, if a person takes their pro-life stance to this extreme they better be 100% vegan and essentially live a holy life where they wouldn’t harm a fly. I could respect that, anything less is hypocrisy.

Unsurprisingly the states going this far also consider dystopian big gov measures like monitoring women’s periods, instituting “bounties” on abortions, or tracking the travel of possibly pregnant women (you know, in case they visit a “free” state). It’s a sickness.

 

Is a 'fetal heartbeat' really a heartbeat at 6 weeks?

Rather, at six weeks of pregnancy, an ultrasound can detect "a little flutter in the area that will become the future heart of the baby," said Dr. Saima Aftab, medical director of the Fetal Care Center at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami. This flutter happens because the group of cells that will become the future "pacemaker" of the heart gain the capacity to fire electrical signals, she said.

This from 2019

When Are Heartbeats Audible During Pregnancy? - FactCheck.org

n medicine, however, a fetus doesn’t exist until eight weeks after fertilization, or at the end of the 10th week of pregnancy, when all the major organ systems have begun to form. Before then, the correct term is an embryo.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also has said in a statement, “What is interpreted as a heartbeat in these bills is actually electrically-induced flickering of a portion of the fetal tissue that will become the heart as the embryo develops. Thus, ACOG does not use the term ‘heartbeat’ to describe these legislative bans on abortion because it is misleading language, out of step with the anatomical and clinical realities of that stage of pregnancy.”

The fact-check site does acknowledge it is called heartbeat in some medical literature. It goes on to explain in detail the whole process.

By all accounts at that stage there is no heart, but there is an electrical signal generated that will eventually initiate the heart beat. There is not a beating heart and there is not a circulatory system.

 

100% agree with this. It is a totally emotional POV. A pill initiated abortion is essentially a miscarriage. There is no consciousness, no feeling or pain, no circulatory system (which to your point I’ve found irrelevant anyway). There is no history of memory or brain activity. An embryo isn’t that much different than embryos of other animals. All there is is a potential for future human life.

It can only be explained as a position due to religion / faith.

But There are 40 million worldwide abortions. Do we want them all to stop? If the idea is to reduce human suffering, why not focus on the children that have a real heartbeat, have memories, have feelings, have pain and are suffering?

For many of these voters abortion in the US is their number one issue. “Saving” the lives of some of the million US abortions. So I assume God must really primarily be concerned with what is happening in the US and less so worldwide.

 

Gillum was a super creepy mistake. I am not sure he was better or worse than Crist. I don’t think I have ever voted democrat for governor. I long for the chance to vote for a Bob Graham or walk-in Lawton. I might have voted for Bob’s daughter on the hope.

 

Why would it matter either way? A (tiny) muscle isn't conscious.

 

Marketing.

How many “heartbeat” bumper stickers have been sold? It’s harder to build slogans around more abstract ideas as “consciousness” or “viability”. There are people making money off these slogans, never mind all the politicians that pander to the extremes with promises of making it law.