By a vote of 31 to 6, the Kentucky Senate voted yesterday to pass SB9, known as a “heartbeat bill.” The bill will now go on to the Kentucky House. If it passes and is signed into law, it will restrict abortion once a preborn child’s heartbeat is detected. Opponents of the bill stated that this would be at approximately five or six weeks gestation, while supporters of the bill claim, according to Wave 3 News, that “the bill specifies the use of an external ultrasound, which would typically be able to identify a heartbeat at around ten weeks.”
Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are against the bill, and the local news outlet noted that an ACLU representative “said the bill would see a legal challenge from the group as soon as it passes.”
READ: First trimester babies aren’t blobs of tissue — they’re amazingly complex
Earlier this week, the Mississippi House and Senate both passed heartbeat bills, and other states — Ohio, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee — are reportedly considering similar legislation, which is quite the contrast to states like New York (which already passed an extreme bill allowing abortion up to birth), Virginia (which failed to pass its extreme abortion bill that would also allow abortion to birth), Vermont, and Rhode Island (both of which are attempting to further cement extreme late-term abortion in law as well).
A preborn child at six weeks gestation already has detectable brain waves and has had a heartbeat since between days 16 and 21 after fertilization. By six to seven weeks, that same heart has four chambers. Rapid development occurs in the first trimester, and though the preborn child is small, he or she has recognizable body parts. As stated previously by Live Action News, by nine to ten weeks, “[a] girl now has eggs in her ovaries, and a baby at this stage can suck his thumb, move his tongue, sigh, stretch, move his head, and open his mouth. According to [The Endowment for Human Development], ‘right- and left-handedness emerges.'”
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