My reading is that the argument is not that a heartbeat isn't "electrically induced flickering" but that the thing flickering should not yet be classified as a heart, and so it's disingenuous to call it a heartbeat.
I don’t think the criticism is on the “electrically induced flickering” part of the statement. The entire embryo at that stage is about the size of a kidney bean.
There’s no heart to speak of, and probably no audible beat. (Doctors, correct me here)
A heartbeat is an "electrically induced flickering", yes. Neon lights are also "electrically induced flickering", but I wouldn't call that a heartbeat.
You need a heart to get heartbeat.
This is already a slippery slope argumentation.
Is gutted fish without a head alive just because its muscles are spasming?
The difference being that a gutted fish will not eventually turn into an alive fish. But the "electrically induced flickering" detected in a mother's womb will, in fact, turn into a heart, inside a "blob of cells" that will, in fact, turn into a human.
You might turn out to be a murderer; you wouldn't appreciate it if we preemptively threw you in jail.
What about case where twins are developing and one cannibalizes the other? Is that a murder now?
I think this is the commonly attacked premise for abortion, roughly along utilitarian lines.
The hard part about drawing lines like this is that it requires it to work on both sides of the life/death spectrum.
"Weeks 6 to 7
Arm and leg buds start to grow. Your baby's brain forms into 5 different areas. Some cranial nerves are visible. Eyes and ears begin to form. Tissue grows that will become your baby's spine and other bones. Baby's heart continues to grow and now beats at a regular rhythm. Blood pumps through the main vessels."
I think the point still stands that at some point you draw an arbitrary line of when mere potential for human life becomes human life, and I wouldn't draw that line early on in the embryo stage.
HN is not afraid to go anti-science when doing so fits the preferred narrative.
This implies that the heart is pumping the blood; yet I believe that at this point it's still the mother's heart doing the pumping. The author is likely fully aware that readers will be making incorrect assumptions; therefore it should be downvoted to oblivion.
The heart, whose development starts at the 3rd week of gestation, has rapid and irregular contractions capable of pumping the blood inside the vessels.
At this period, the developing circulatory system allows maternal- embryonic nutritive and gaseous changes at the chorionic villi.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3279166/
May not be 'blood' but it's a heart; doing the function of a heart.
It's life.
Isn't this what all political bills are though? Often the fight over this stuff is over language? I mean we still have the Patriot act - no one feels the need to redefine how we talk about that one?
Also, considering this:
> “What’s interpreted as a heartbeat in these bills is actually electrically induced flickering of a portion of fetal tissue that will become the heart as the embryo develops.”
Isn't a heartbeat in general to be considered an "electrically induced flickering" of sorts?
Seems weird for the newspapers to not at least call the bills what the legislators are calling it and then explain why in long-form why they're wrong.