The fetal test has come and gone with a quiet flop. They didn’t actually have a 5-week pregnant woman to test, and it failed to work for a 9 week fetus.

Two young mothers were given ultrasounds in a packed room at the Statehouse as part of a House committee meeting Wednesday. The heartbeat of a fetus at 15 weeks gestation was easily detected. The heartbeat in a fetus of nine weeks gestation was difficult to detect.

But have no fear! The technology will inevitably improve, and they’ll be able to detect heartbeats earlier and earlier. And then they’ll figure out how to test for expression of heart-specific proteins, and we’ll be able to recognize its presence before it begins to beat. And then some brilliant ideologue will notice that the genes for heart specification are present at fertilization and before, and we’ll be right down to defending every sperm as containing the germ of a beating heart, and deserving of love and protection and reverence, exactly as god intended.

And the heartbeats of women can be ignored again, also as god intended. Shut up, lady! I hear your heart pounding, and the Lord demands your silence!

(via Plunderbund)