The Left’s Abortion Position Is Openly Anti-Science

Democrats suddenly believe abortion is their golden ticket to winning the midterm elections. Democratic candidates up and down the ticket, from Beto O’Rourke in Texas to Stacey Abrams in Georgia, are running on an agenda that supports abortion up until the moment of birth. As Democratic messaging grows more bullish and aggressive, their abortion positions have become not just out of touch with voters but out of touch with scientific truth.

Former state lawmaker Stacey Abrams is the latest mind-boggling example. The Democrat running for Georgia governor made waves last week when she claimed, “There is no such thing as a heartbeat at six weeks. It is a manufactured sound designed to convince people that men have the right to take control of a woman’s body.”

This is an absurd claim. By asserting that preborn babies’ heartbeats cannot be detected via ultrasound at six weeks, Abrams is rejecting decades’ worth of common medical practice (by physicians on both sides of the issue) and diving headfirst into the murky depths of some anti-science conspiracy theory.

For decades, the “party of science” has twisted science to fit its own narratives and political agenda. In my 11 years of pro-life activism in the Texas Capitol, I’ve witnessed countless pro-abortion rants about pro-lifers’ pseudoscience calling mere “embryos” “babies” and chastising our legislation such as the Preborn Pain Act for ignoring the advice of leading (pro-abortion) medical societies. The rhetoric we are now hearing around fetal heartbeats is a new level of delusion.

Using Doppler signals to detect a preborn baby’s beating heart — a practice ubiquitous throughout the medical community since the 1970s — is a stretch too far for abortion extremists like Abrams.

Never mind six weeks, Johns Hopkins Medicine posits that a fetal heartbeat begins at four weeks gestation. Even Planned Parenthood’s own website admitted “a very basic beating heart and circulatory system develop” by five to six weeks, before quickly scrubbing its website in affirmation of Abrams’ theory.

Now, Planned Parenthood’s website claims a baby’s pumping heart merely “sounds” like a heartbeat. In order to continue pushing abortion in an increasingly technologically advanced society, the left has abandoned science.

Abrams went as far as to claim that there never has been a “sound” detectable by Doppler or ultrasound technology, but that it’s more likely every single medical professional working in obstetrics and gynecology or those assisting mothers in hospital maternity wings or birthing centers around our country are part of a huge conspiracy, in which they play “manufactured” sounds to deceive women into believing their child has a heartbeat. Get out the tin foil hats.

Abrams’ utter nonsensical argument was meant as an attack on Georgia’s law protecting preborn babies with detectable heartbeats, an undeniable sign of the child’s humanity and a major indicator of healthy fetal development.

When Texas passed the first heartbeat bill to be enforced in the U.S., the left collectively lost its mind. The New York Times maligned the life-saving law, claiming that “at this very early stage of a pregnancy, the embryo is the size of a pomegranate seed and has only a primitive tube of cardiac cells that emit electric pulses and pump blood.”

Unfortunately for The New York Times, redefining words to distract from their true meaning does not change reality. Cardiac cells that emit electric pulses and pump blood are the basic definition of a working human heart.

Medical science and technology are constantly progressing, and we are at a point where the humanity of preborn children in the womb is undeniable. We now have the tools and knowledge to observe the progression and development of preborn babies like never before in human history.

We can see the spark at the moment of fertilization (sperm-egg fusion) when a distinct human being’s life begins, already possessing unique DNA. At this moment of fertilization this child’s sex, hair color, eye color, and countless other traits have already been determined. Furthermore, the work of embryologists like Dr. Maureen Condic shows how in an instant the embryo possesses the molecular composition and immediately begins behaving like an organism, not just a cell. In those first moments after fertilization, science observes the embryo acting in an “interdependent and coordinated manner” to “carry on the activities of life.”

Ironically, in the same week that Abrams denied preborn babies have heartbeats, researchers at Durham University in England published recordings of preborn babies reacting to different tastes and smells. The scientists’ 4D ultrasound technology captured one preborn baby smiling at the taste of her mother ingesting carrot tablets and grimacing at the taste of kale.

How does the pro-abortion left plan to overcome all these pesky scientific facts and new medical research? Ignore the science. If that does not work, then just change the words to distract from their true meaning. A heartbeat is not a heartbeat, it’s just electrical pulses emitting from cardiac cells. And if all else fails, claim that medical technology is merely a tool of the patriarchy to control women’s bodies.

As a bioethicist and a pro-life advocate, I want to acknowledge the medical, economic, and social barriers women and families face during unexpected or difficult pregnancies. I want to discuss broken institutions like our inadequate foster care system, but I’m afraid we won’t make any sort of progress or legislative change if half of our political class is openly hostile to the scientifically confirmed moral status of the preborn child.

The abortion industry and its defenders are all too willing to close their eyes and cover their ears to the irrefutable data about the miracle of human life. If the left were to open its eyes to accept biological realities, it would have no choice but to acknowledge the humanity of the preborn child and reject the inhumanity of elective abortion.

Will the left listen to science or continue in its blind faith in this radical political agenda?

Dr. John Seago, MA, DBE is a published Bioethicist and serves as the President for Texas Right to Life, the oldest and largest statewide Pro-Life organization in Texas. He received a Master’s in Bioethics from Trinity International University and his Doctorate in Bioethics and Health Policy from Loyola University Chicago.

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