{"id":209535,"date":"2019-09-01T08:00:53","date_gmt":"2019-09-01T13:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=209535"},"modified":"2019-08-30T20:48:59","modified_gmt":"2019-08-31T01:48:59","slug":"senator-brain-heartbeat-fully-functional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/senator-brain-heartbeat-fully-functional\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee senator: Preborn baby’s brain and heart not ‘fully functional’ until 26 weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

A Tennessee state Senator recently claimed during testimony surrounding a heartbeat bill that a preborn baby has a “fully functional brain and heart”\u00a0only at the end of the second trimester. The outrageous declaration came during a hearing on a proposed pro-life heartbeat law in the state senate.<\/p>\n

During its Summer Study Session in mid-August, Tennessee state senators listened to testimony for and against the proposed fetal heartbeat law, HB0077<\/a>, that passed in the state legislature in March. The bill is now before the state senate.\u00a0The exchange took place when Senator Katrina Robinson, a Democrat from Memphis, grilled Hal Rounds, a lawyer from Fayetteville county and a Tennessee Tea Party leader. Blasting the Roe v. Wade<\/em> decision for its agnosticism on the question of when human life begins, Rounds referred to the Tennessee Uniform Determination of Death Act<\/a>, which defines death as the \u201cirreversible cessation\u201d of heart and brain functions, as an objective medical standard for defining conditions for human life. Rounds asserted that \u201cthe law presumes that if there is a brain functioning and a heart functioning then life is functioning, in the womb or anywhere else. It makes clear that life has a legally medical consensus, even though the court said there is no consensus.\u201d<\/p>\n