Heartbeat Act refuses to take into account the victims in these scenarios who have been forced into pregnancy. Not only must they deal with the copious amounts of emotional and mental stress, but they are forced to confront the overwhelming reality that they might be pregnant because of the offender’s actions. Furthermore, the new Texas Heartbeat Act prevents those who are pregnant from getting an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. However, Texas Governor Greg Abbott justifies the law since it “doesn't force victims of rape and incest to carry their pregnancy to term because it ‘provides at least 6 weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion” (Cohen). Unfortunately, due to the variance of pregnancy symptoms, some “people don’t notice symptoms until a few months into their pregnancy,” according to Planned Parenthood (Attia). This means that victims themselves may not know that they are pregnant until well past the cutoff period for termination in Texas. Being unable to terminate a pregnancy or deal with the outcome for at least another nine months causes substantial anxiety. As such, when forced to carry out a physically straining pregnancy as a result of sexual assault, victims can face a whole other host of complications such as postpartum depression, trauma, and possibly even suicide. The prevalent neglect in the Texas Heartbeat Act in regards to cases of sexual assault vividly highlights the extremely damaging repercussions brought on by the enforcement of the law. By disregarding the physical and mental health of women in Texas, the Texas legislation is rapidly stripping away the rights of the women in regards to their own bodies, forcing them to endure long-term physical and mental stress. With the enactment of the Texas abortion law, women are manipulated into believing that PAGE 4 VOL. 1, NO. 1 ZEITGEIST fetal viability is more valuable than their own lives, safety, and well-being. Pro-lifers, especially those in Texas, argue that a fetus becomes life at conception. They believe that it is living and deserves the same rights as any other human being. According to a reading titled “An Argument That Abortion Is Wrong,” “[f]etuses are both human and alive,” and because “[h]umans have the right to life ... fetuses have the right to life” (Marquis). Although some may consider a fetus as “living”, it does not endure all of the physical stressors that a mother to be has to experience during pregnancy, such as high blood pressure, infections, and in serious cases, death. Even so, many pro-lifers in Texas claim that since the fetus can experience “unreflective pain … mediated by the developing function of the nervous system as early as 12 weeks,” the process of termination will actually do more harm than good (Sobolik). However, Kate Connors, a spokesperson for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, contests this claim, stating that “based on gestational age, the fetus is not capable of feeling pain until the third trimester” (Miller). The third trimester does not begin until around 27 weeks of pregnancy. Before then, the fetus’s nervous system has not developed enough for its brain to send pain signals to the rest of its body. The majority of abortions occur within the first two trimesters, before the fetus can feel anything. Therefore, it is safe to say that when aborted, a majority of the fetuses do not feel pain. Those that do are most likely terminated to prevent harmful implications for the mother. To reiterate, the Texas Heartbeat Act prevents women from getting an abortion six weeks into their pregnancy. By this time period, although the fetus
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