{"id":252733,"date":"2021-09-10T10:44:04","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T15:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=252733"},"modified":"2021-09-09T15:22:47","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T20:22:47","slug":"texas-heartbeat-science-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/texas-heartbeat-science-abortion\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Heartbeat Act debate exposes the strange pseudoscience of abortion advocates"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(National Review<\/a>) The\u00a0enactment of the\u00a0Texas Heartbeat Act<\/a>\u00a0has exposed the pseudoscience undergirding the worldview of abortion-rights supporters.<\/p>\n

Heartbeat bills such as the one in Texas are predicated on the fact that an unborn child\u2019s heartbeat can be detected via ultrasound at about six weeks\u2019 gestation. For a movement that defends abortion on the grounds that the unborn child is not human \u2014 or has no claim to rights \u2014 this scientific reality poses some difficulties.<\/p>\n

An enormous number of the justifications for legal abortion are detached from science, declaring the fetus inhuman or not a rights-bearing person on account of its as-yet-undeveloped or underdeveloped mental or physical functions.<\/p>\n

The argument for legal abortion prior to \u201cviability,\u201d for instance, rationalizes abortion before about 20 weeks\u2019 gestation on the grounds that the unborn child\u2019s lungs are insufficiently developed to allow for survival outside the womb. Therefore, on this view, that child can be killed prior to such development because it remains dependent on its mother. (Why this logic doesn\u2019t allow for the killing of newborns or adults who are on ventilators typically remains unexplained.)<\/p>\n

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