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Can a baby’s heartbeat be ‘manufactured’?

As a woman, as a mother, and as a human being, I am disgusted with the repeated lies shared time and again on the news, on social media, and within our schools.

(us.fotolia.com)

As a woman, a mother, and a human being, I am disgusted by the recent remarks of Stacey Abrams, Democrat from Georgia, who is running for governor of that state.

When speaking in Atlanta about preborn babies and fetal heartbeats, Abrams said, “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.”

A manufactured sound to control women? I think she’s read too many dystopian novels.

I’m not sure if it’s worse to believe that she really thinks this or that anyone is giving credence to her comments.

She has faced backlash, of course, from people who understand the science of embryology. But misinformation and nonsense like this must be refuted every chance we get. And often. We must never stop teaching the truth about the development of the preborn baby.

To help us understand embryology, Contend Projects discusses the Carnegie Stages of Human Development:

The Carnegie Stages were instituted as scientific fact in 1942 by a secular government organization that is part of the National Institutes of Health, the National Museum of Health and Medicine’s Human Developmental Anatomy Center. They are based on acclaimed research and are consistently reviewed and verified by the international nomenclature committee (20-25 of the leading PhDs in human embryology). The Carnegie Stages are internationally required to be used professionally in all textbooks written by human embryologists.

Carnegie Stage 1 represents FERTILIZATION and is divided into three substages; a, b and c, and is the unicellular embryo that contains unique genetic material and is a single-cell HUMAN BEING that develops into all of the subsequent stages of a human being. The earliest human embryo is represented by Carnegie Stage 1a, and the “zygote” is represented by Carnegie Stage 1c. (emphasis in original)

The Carnegie Stages beautifully illustrate the truth about how a baby begins developing after the sperm fertilizes the egg. Once that egg is fertilized, a new human being is created. This is not opinion. It’s a scientific fact. And in that very first stage, “all the genetic material necessary for the new individual, plus some redundant chromosomes, is now within a single plasmalemma.”

All the DNA that child will ever have is present from that moment forward. What an amazing and beautiful gift!

But established science apparently means nothing in today’s “me first” society. Women like Abrams want abortion to be legal because they believe a baby can either be wanted or unwanted—and an unwanted baby has no humanity and can be tossed in the trash.

We see day after day that pro-aborts try desperately to make abortion into an issue of someone else “controlling” a woman’s body, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Opposing abortion is about protecting the child residing in a woman’s body. It’s about teaching the dignity of that child. It’s about loving both the mom and the baby.

Pro-aborts also like to argue that pro-lifers do nothing to help support the mom and baby after the baby is born. We know this is not true. But it’s something they say repeatedly because, as we all know, if you repeat a lie often enough (or create a meme out of it), people will believe it.

So, let us be proactive when we hear lies like this from Abrams. Let us stand up for the babies, who most definitely have real heartbeats and who are most definitely human beings.

And let us remember that the humanity of a person is not based on what someone else thinks of that person. We do not have the right or the ability to refute the humanity of a human being. Their humanity just is. Refuting it is like saying, “I don’t believe the sun is a star.” Regardless of what you believe, the truth doesn’t change.

So yes, as a woman, as a mother, and as a human being, I am disgusted with the repeated lies shared time and again on the news, on social media, and within our schools. A preborn baby is a human being from the time he’s created, and no one has the right to take his life from him.


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About Susan Ciancio 63 Articles
Susan Ciancio is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and has worked as a writer and editor for nearly 19 years; 13 of those years have been in the pro-life sector. Currently, she is the editor of American Life League’s Celebrate Life Magazine—the nation’s premier Catholic pro-life magazine. She is also the executive editor of ALL’s Culture of Life Studies Program—a pre-K-12 Catholic pro-life education organization.

12 Comments

  1. I suppose it’s only a “manufactured ” heartbeat in the case of an unwanted child but the doppler heartbeat we hear for “planned ” children is real?

  2. Since strong efforts are in progress to de-humanize human beings who are in utero and are not capable of speaking for themselves, I fear that the next push will be the de-humanization of the elderly who are unable to speak for themselves for various reasons; e.g., Alzheimer’s and other conditions that destroy cognitive functions. I am 65 years old and healthy at this point, but I fear for the future of all of us who are growing old.

    • Absolutely. Especially when the percentage of elderly in our population is growing larger every year & will be needing more finite healthcare resources.
      I just read in a rural hometown newspaper that the average age of county residents is now 60. In 1980 the median age of men there was 38.

  3. Presently, there is a petition pending in the Supreme Court for the recognition of the personhood of the unborn. Abrams could be trying to sway opinion and affect the outcome via the media. Similarly, it could be Joan Jacobson the Michigan pro-lifer who was shot in the shoulder and injured, was made like a banner – something to do with trespass. And there has been an escalation in the legal reaction to Fr. Moscinski.

    “Manufacture” is an interesting word someone can turn against another when the first is himself engaged in twisting things.

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/now-is-the-time-catholic-pro-life-group-petitions-us-supreme-court-to-recognize-fetal-personhood/

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/fbi-charges-pro-life-priest-with-violating-abortion-access-law-one-week-after-mark-houck-raid/

    https://aleteia.org/2022/10/03/84-year-old-pro-life-grandma-shot-going-door-to-door/

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvzzTc1QJ-0&t=7s

  4. Hard to believe that any Catholic with a brain could vote democratic. They stand for abortion to the day of birth (and lately some have had the nerve to suggest even beyond).You have abortion cheerleaders in “Catholics” Pelosi and Biden. Now “catholic” Gavin Newsome has come down on the side of helping to fund abortion billboards with a bible quote on them!!! It would appear that any Catholic authority has chosen to stick it’s head in the sand. Sad, and sick. Abortion is not “health care”– it is murder. Bravo to the Protestants for confronting Newsome regarding his sick and offensive action. Catholics need to remember that aiding another in a sinful act makes you complicit in that sin as well.

  5. In real law, the assertion of removing what is “controlling the mother’s body” is an admission – constitutes an admission – to fact, that there is a child there:

    ‘ We see day after day that pro-aborts try desperately to make abortion into an issue of someone else “controlling” a woman’s body, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Opposing abortion is about protecting the child residing in a woman’s body. ‘

    Let someone propose that the FACE Act be amended to where it can only work to granting injunction at the time; and thereafter cease to have effect. And that this limitation should arise because 1. it is normal in statute law, 2. the existing penalties are penal and unsupportable and 3. the underpinning justification (Roe) is gone.

    And let another propose the complete repeal of the FACE Act.

    And let someone raise a total Constitutional challenge against it upon the whole of the statute as imbalanced and noxious, based on the same principles of basic law.

    And as well let another challenge FACE on Constitutional grounds more usual in US law, within the individual elements inside the statute.

    • Yes.

      Deuteronomy 30:15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.

      Psalm 127:3 Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.

      Matthew 19:14 But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

      God bless you.

  6. “Can a baby’s heartbeat be ‘manufactured’?”
    Of course not, and nobody really believes it can be. However, the mere assertion of that it can be, amplified over mass media, has distracted good people with the task of refuting it, which this reader suspects was the real goal of the exercise. In the bizarre world of perception management, a refutation is at least as useful as an endorsement.

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