Legislation

Legislation regarding abortion is the means to end abortion. But legislation must be consistent with truth. Once we diverge from the totality of truth, deception can seep in and disorder well-intentioned laws which ultimately seek to put an end to the act of abortion. With this said, last year in Florida, the six-week ban stayed intact in spite of an effort to codify abortion until birth with an amendment to the state constitution.

The prior passage of a Florida state law banning abortion at six weeks when a fetal heartbeat can be detected offers an illustration of the pitfalls of caving to the full truth. More than half of Florida voters desired to allow abortion until birth but the sixty-percent threshold for the amendment fell short this past November. It was close, however. Three more percent, and abortion until 40 weeks would have been the result.

The cardiovascular system forms by the middle of the third week when the embryo can no longer gain nutrition and oxygen by diffusion. Fluid runs through blood vessels while the mother waits for her menstrual cycle to start. The mother at this point realizes she may be pregnant as she has missed her period. She is just thinking of getting a pregnancy test.

By day twenty-one in the uterus, the myocardium (heart muscle) forms in a tube-like fashion through a directed folding process, creating a cardiac loop by the twenty-eighth day. We can now see a structure that looks like what we think of when we think of a heart. Blood begins to flow through the structure. The heart begins to beat by the twenty-first day and must continue beating for further development.

As an anesthesiologist and therefore a daily user of ultrasound technology as part of my medical practice, the advances of ultrasound technology seen over my thirty-year career assuredly mean further advances will come. The sound detection of the heartbeat at six weeks (relied upon by the Florida legislators who crafted the six-week law) will one day be detected closer to three weeks when the heart begins to beat and pump blood.

In the matter of determining who lives and who dies, moral issues cannot be determined by changes in scientific discoveries. When sound detection is possible at four weeks, does the law then change? The current six-week ban on abortion was almost overturned by the people. Was this due to creating a law not grounded in the truth of human life worthy of protection beginning at one cell? When one allows error (avoidance of the whole truth) to seep in, deception will find a way to ruin everything. Truth matters.