When Texas passed a new law protecting unborn babies known as the “heartbeat bill,” abortion activists moved quickly to bring legal action to stop enforcement of the new measure. The Texas law limits abortions to the two weeks following a missed menstrual cycle, aiming to stop abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detectable.
A large group of abortion providers and advocates, led by Planned Parenthood, filed suit on July 13 in the federal court in Austin against a group of state officials charged with enforcing the new law, seeking to attack the law before it goes into effect on September 1.
Texas law differs from those found in other states in that it provides private citizens with the power to enforce the act through lawsuits in Texas state courts. The argument is that there is no claim of a constitutional violation for enforcing the law without state enforcement.
Fetal heartbeats are a bright-line indication of human life, especially since the permanent loss of heartbeat activity indicates clinical death. Stopping a human heart from beating is a sure indication of human extinction.
By protecting babies at the stage of development when heartbeat activity begins, up to 85 percent of abortions currently conducted in Texas might be prevented. Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit perversely turns the law designed to protect unborn children into an alleged attack on women.
The abortionist behind the lawsuit challenging the new law attempts to ignore that a heartbeat constitutes evidence of life. Instead, when Planned Parenthood must address it, fetal heartbeat activity is described in the same odd way by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Abortionists refer to fetal heartbeat as “electrically induced flickering” of tissue. No sane person would refer to a normal heartbeat as “flickering,” but that language helps dehumanize the helpless unborn.
The fact that growing organs are not fully formed in the womb but continue to grow and develop until adulthood is so evident that it doesn’t need clarification. To abortion advocates desperate to call unborn children anything other than humans, everything stimulates tissue.
If Planned Parenthood is concerned about women’s health, the new Texas law provides an ideal opportunity to make services that pregnant women need more accessible. Women still need health care, support, and competent counseling whether they decide to abort a child or not.
Given recent revelations that Planned Parenthood has been involved in the trafficking of the organs of children killed by abortion, the opportunity to expand non-abortion services and improve its public image is something the organization should seriously consider.
