Heartbeat an arbitrary guideline for development of fetus

Lifestyles
May 18, 2011
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Physicians are trained in the ethics of medicine from the first year of school. As a second-year medical student about to take the boards, I feel the need to insert some medical facts into the “heartbeat bill” debate.

A heartbeat may be heard at 4-5 weeks, when some women don’t even know they are pregnant yet. This heart is four chambers in a straight line and similar to a fish heart.

For more than 30 years, brain death, not heartbeat, has been used to denote life in medicine. Thorough neurological testing for basic reflexes and reaction to stimuli is used to test this.

Neurological pathways in the embryo are still developing at birth. After 28 weeks of gestation (third trimester) the fetal brain begins to communicate with the fetal body.

This means that a fetus would not have any basic reactions to stimuli until well after the current cutoff for non-medically indicated, elective abortion. These fetuses cannot feel pain, nor are they self-aware.

We should not limit people’s choices based on a non-medical, arbitrary marker of development such as a heartbeat.

Margarette J. Shegog

Huber Heights

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