Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier (Wash.) said Tuesday that conservatives mistakenly have conflated a heartbeat with personhood in passing “heartbeat” abortion bills aimed at restricting the procedure.
“I can tell you about a single heart cell, a myocardial cell, in a petri dish in a lab at the University of Washington that will beat,” Schrier, who is also a doctor, told Hill.TV’s Jamal Simmons and Buck Sexton on “Rising.” “All this is evidence of electrical activity which happens in a myocardial cell.”
“I think what the right has managed to do is somehow conflate a heartbeat with a soul or with personhood, and I believe that if people understood, that this is just what a myocardial cell does, that that number, 55 percent, would probably go up to 73 percent,” she continued.
Schrier was referring to a recent USA Today/Ipsos poll, which found that 55 percent of respondents said they oppose fetal heartbeat laws, while 73 percent said they opposed all abortion facilities closing in their states.
“Anyone who is pro-choice would understand that that is just a gimmick.”
Schrier’s comments come amid a rise in the number of state legislatures moving forward with measures aimed at curtailing abortion access. A number of states, including Georgia, have passed “heartbeat” abortion bills that ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, around six weeks of pregnancy — before most women know they are pregnant.
Louisiana last week became the fifth state in recent months to pass such legislation, along with Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Ohio.
Supporters of the anti-abortion measures hope their passage will force the Supreme Court to take up a challenge to Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that legalized the procedure at the federal level.
— Julia Manchester
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