Saturday, March 05, 2011

Ohio "Heartbeat Bill" already accomplishing much

Two fetuses make appearance at Ohio abortion bill debate:

The lobbying effort to end abortion in the United States moved into strange new territory Wednesday as two fetuses were presented via ultrasound to a packed committee room of the Ohio state legislature.

Two women were laid out six metres away from state legislators while a technician used a probe to show images of each woman’s fetus on a portable screen.

A heart monitor was used to project the sound of the beating heart of each fetus, nine and 15 weeks respectively.


I'm wondering why they needed the 15-week baby. An 8-week baby would have been ideal, since according to the Centers for Disease Control, more than half of all abortions in the US are performed at eight or fewer weeks of gestation, and there is an audible heartbeat at 8 weeks.

Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, the state wing of the country’s most powerful abortion rights group, called the scene in the committee room absurd, and labelled the bill one of the most aggressive since the Roe vs. Wade ruling in 1973.

The bill would make it illegal for an abortion to be performed once a heartbeat can be detected in the womb.

Since the heartbeat can be detected in a fetus at about six weeks, and many women are not even aware they are pregnant until after six weeks, the bill would essentially ban abortion, said Ms. Copeland.


Paging Captain Obvious. The whole point is to make people very aware of what abortion does -- kill a living human being -- and trust basic human decency to do the rest.

“Did these legislators really need to see a fetus in the committee room to know it has a heartbeat?” she said. “The whole thing was absurd. It seemed like the members of the committee had no idea what an ultrasound looked like or ever heard of a fetal heart monitor before.”


It's perfectly reasonable to believe that some of these legislators, like the Planned Parenthood-trained college students in Colorado, have been taught by abortion advocates that the heart doesn't beat until 24 weeks. And it's fun to force an abortion advocate to admit in public that abortion does typically target a being with a beating heart.

Even while (no doubt painfully) admitting this fact, Ms. Copeland evidently believes that she, herself, should be the ultimate arbiter of what information women should be given when considering abortion:

“This is not the kind of information that women need to decide whether they are going to get an abortion,” she said.


It's also interesting to note the schizophrenic thinking the bill is already provoking. Robin Marty simultaneously decries "Abortion Stops a Beating Heart" to be a "misleading claim", but evidently also true, since she also points out that banning abortions once the heartbeat can be observed would create in effect "a total abortion ban."

12 comments:

Kathy said...

It's fun to catch people in their own lies, deceit, and distortion!

But to answer why they had women who were 9 & 15 weeks pregnant rather than earlier... at 6 weeks pregnant, I'm pretty sure you have to get a vaginal ultrasound in order to hear the heartbeat, which means that the woman would have to be naked from the waist down at some point so the "dildo-cam" (as some women affectionately call it) could be used; but by 9 weeks, I'm pretty sure you can have a transabdominal one.

L. said...

I saw the heartbeat of my own unwanted embryo at 6 weeks -- I can't remember whether it was 6 weeks post conception or 6 weeks from my last period. Since it didn't change the way I felt about him/her and the pregnancy in the least, I can't imagine that knowing the thing has a pulse is going to make any difference. This seems like a thinly-disguised effort to ban most abortions, because -- let's face it -- the people working for this law would love to ban the abortion of embyros without a detectable heartbeat, too, which would be their next logoical step.

L. said...

Hmmm, try as I might, I can't see to drum up any good vitriol. Maybe I'm just not cut out for this troll stuff.

I suppose I should at least call the Ohio legistalors stupid or something, but overall, I think they have good intentions. I just don't agree with them.

Christina Dunigan said...

L, you're just not cut out for troll stuff.

And I believe that your comfort with killing your own offspring is unusual, and that most women, given the information and alternatives, won't choose a dead baby.

If I'm wrong, I hope I have a sudden brain siezure and just die, because a world full of people who really are okay with snuffing their kids is the most depressing adn soulless place I can think of. In fact, it's as close to Hell as Grand Theft Auto is.

L. said...

Hmmmm, I don't know about that, because my non-pro-life friends seem to feel the same way as I do. And I think most miscarriages are mourned, but I know other women who were happy to lose pregnancies.

I also know lots and lots of women who don't regret their abortions -- but a few who do (and plenty on the Internet who do) so I have never thought abortion was the answer for everyone.

L. said...

Also, I think most women, given the information and alternatives, would choose to avoid pregnancy in the first place. Abortion is something fun to do, that people seek.

L. said...

HA! Big typo! In that last sentence, I mean, is NOT!
And no, that was not a Freudian slip. ;)

Christina Dunigan said...

Yeah, I'm sure that except for the rare, strange group of women for whom abortion is some sort of rite of passage, the vast majority of women would prefer to avoid getting pregnant when they don't want to be.

But abortions CAN be avoided after conception as well. Half the siblings in my family were born as a result of birth control failures, as were all three of my granddaughters, and the majority of my nieces and nephews and a lot of my friends. A lot of women really DO love their babies regardless of the timing, and I'd like to see the proCHOICE side give them a bit more support. (And "Meh. I support Democrats and they support programs for the poor," isn't support when what the women are constantly hearing is what a burden they and their children are, and how unfit they are to be mothers, and what failures they are because they got pregnant when they didn't want to, etc.

L. said...

If women are constantly hearing what a burden they and their children are, and how unfit they are to be mothers, and what failures they are because they got pregnant when they didn't want to -- then they need to ditch those creeps and get some new friends and aquaintances.

Lots of people are truly pro-CHOICE, not pro-abortion. (Of course, plenty of people on all sides are judgemental a**holes who want to make everyone else feel bad, no matter what.)

The saddest abortion tales I've ever heard (aside from the ones in which the woman is left dead or maimed, that is) are 1) the religious young women who have abortions because they don't think their families would ever forgive them the sin of an unwed pregnancy, and they therefore decided to abort and take the sin upon themselves and spare their families their shame, and 2) the old Japanese women who had abortions during and after the war, because they had literally lost born children to starvation before their eyes and didn't want to watch another infant slowly starve, too.

Christina Dunigan said...

Yeah, L, those are pretty wretched scenarios. Though if the church was doing its job very few unmarried Christian girls would be having sex in the first place, and those that did sin would be so immersed in a tradition of repentance and forgiveness that they'd deal with the pregnnacy scripturally.

And it's not the women's friends and family telling her how worthless she is -- it's a society that never shuts up about how unfit for parenting young or unmarried or poor women are. Young and unmarried and poor women can be exemplary parents.

L. said...

I know plenty of pro-life people who would disagree with that! Any woman whose morals are loose enough to "get herself pregnant" has no business raising babies, and she should be compelled to place her baby up for adoption to a deserving Chrisian family. A few decades ago, this was the norm -- social workers regularly removed the offspring of unwed mothers.

Adoption is a beautiful thing, but only when the participants are on the same page -- otherwise, it's something else, entirely.

I know some damn fine single moms, who raised some wonderful "surprise" babies to adulthood.

Christina Dunigan said...

I said if the Church was doing its job. Then people would recognize their own sin and not be throwing stones at a young woman just because her sin is more obvious.