By Sid Schwab / Herald columnist
Six-week fetal-heartbeat bans, to another of which Iowa has just given birth, make neither physiological nor religious sense. Put a shelled peanut in your palm. It’s only a little bigger than a six-week embryo. Tiny, is the point, such that it should be possible, if not to agree, at least to understand how some people might consider it different from a fetus, much less a fully-formed, recognizable baby in utero.
At that stage, a “heartbeat” is a collection of brand-new heart-muscle cells contracting in unison. But, since arteries and veins are only beginning to form, they’re doing none of the work that hearts are there to do. In what way, therefore, does that detectible six-week proto-myocardial activity constitute a meaningful end-point for terminating a pregnancy? A throwback, maybe, to ancient times, pre-Bible, when the soul, the self, was thought to reside in the heart? A working one, presumably.
If the timeline of embryogenesis provides useful markers for legal abortion, might it more reasonably be when something akin to the human brain is present? Isn’t that what sets us apart? At six weeks, the neural tube is developing, but it’s nothing like a brain. Absent that, how does a “heartbeat” define a human, as separate from other developing mammals, from whose embryos at that stage, a difference can’t be distinguished? The only “logical,” consistent position for anti-choice people who consider a fertilized egg equivalent to a baby, is banning abortion from the moment of fertilization. That, at least, in some sense of the word, is logical. Proposed bans on birth control fit right in (YouTube: tinyurl.com/2banBC4u).
Speaking of logic, we should acknowledge, as written here in the past, that at least a third of fertilized eggs and embryos die spontaneously; or, for those who believe that He has a plan and knows us before we’re born, at God’s hand. The scientific term for “miscarriage” is, in fact, “spontaneous abortion.” In His handiwork, we should also include stillbirths and post-partum deaths from unsurvivable birth defects. While there are no laws making God’s reproductive interventions illegal, in several red states women must prove they did nothing to induce a miscarriage if it happens, or be considered an imprisonable felon. Proving a negative, in other words, which is impossible. And they’d be criminals if they were to leave their state to obtain a legal abortion. It’s the, you know, limited government thing.
Speaking of abandoning logic, or, more properly, truth, you’ll be hard-pressed (a term of mysterious origin, first used in 1707; I was curious) to find a Republican candidate for president who isn’t pushing the stupendous lie that Democrats are for abortion up to the moment of birth. Beyond, even, according to some, including Ron DeSantis. Which puts the whole anti-choice movement, at least as applies to Republican legislators and seekers of office, into perspective: Like all of their lies on loop, it’s a disingenuous signal to their voters, susceptible as they are to all similarly mendacious miscarriages of truth. In fact, it’s safe to say — because some have admitted it when discovered — that many anti-choice advocates have previously availed themselves, meaning their mistresses and consorts, of the procedure.
It’s not unlike Justice Clarence Thomas, having taken personal advantage of affirmative action, pulling up the ladder (or, in this analogy, the curette) behind him. If there were time limits on non-disclosure agreements, it’s a safe bet we’d know of others. Including one who’s on his pre-candidacy record claiming to be pro-choice. For easily-understood reasons.
Forced-birth minds won’t be changed by this or any other commentary. So let’s mention other ways in which Trumpublicans are determined to make the world more dangerous.
In Florida, a state among the highest in pandemic death rates, Brevard County Republicans declared covid vaccines “biological weapons” that must be outlawed across the entire state. In Texas, unchristian Gov. Greg Abbott has deployed deadly barricades of spiked buoys in the Rio Grande, which will purposely kill people trying to cross. This he justifies because of President Biden’s “open border policy,” which doesn’t exist. But the lie does, and it encourages people who believe it to come to the border. And die, if the Abbot-toir works as designed.
In D.C., pretty much every Republican characterizes Trump’s current and imminent indictments as purely political, notwithstanding his illegal taking and lying about classified documents (he’s still lying about the Presidential Records Act) and planning an insurrection. “Criminalizing political disagreement,” is what they call it. I won’t mention the New York Times article describing Trump’s post-election plans to turn the presidency into a dictatorship, exactly as MAGA Republicans hope (New York Times, no paywall: tinyurl.com/TrumpPlan4u).
But let’s end on a happier note. Michigan’s attorney general just issued felony indictments to all 16 participants in Trump’s anti-democracy, pre-dictator, fake-elector scheme. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has narrated the most effective pro-Biden political ad to date (Daily Beast: tinyurl.com/JRB4MTG).
Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.
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