A human heartbeat comes earlier than previously thought.

This is further evidence against the popular ‘pro-choice’ belief that a foetus remains a ‘lump of cells’ for months on end.

From Breitbart:

A study finds an unborn baby’s first heartbeat occurs as early as 16 days after conception.

A research team funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) at the University of Oxford says a baby’s first heartbeat is now far earlier than was previously understood, reports the Daily Mail.

The objective of the research is to help treat Congenital Heart Disease. However, this points out how early the human foetus begins to develop.

The Daily Mail article explains that researchers (emphases mine):

have demonstrated earlier beating of the heart in mouse embryos which, if extrapolated to the human heart, suggests beating as early as 16 days after conception.

In the study, published today in the scientific journal eLife, researchers studied the developing mouse heart and found that the muscle started to contract as soon as it formed the cardiac crescent – an early stage in heart development. 

In mice, this crescent forms 7.5 days after conception, which is equivalent to day 16 in the human embryo.

Previously, it was thought that the heart started to contract a stage later, when the heart appears as a linear tube.

Congenital heart disease is diagnosed in at least 1 in 180 births, which equates to around 4,000 each year or 12 babies each day, in the UK. 

The researchers ultimately hope that by understanding more about how the heart forms in the womb they will one day be able to prevent heart conditions that arise as a foetus develops.

God has the development of His creatures — including mankind — planned as only He can.

We begin functioning very early. This should put a big question mark around Abortion in everyone’s mind.

Abortion is the taking of human life.

The ancient Jews never practised abortion. This is why it is not mentioned in the Bible.

When the early Church began to expand into Greece and the Roman Empire, provision had to be made to condemn the practice.

This is how the document known as the Didache (‘did-uh-kay’) came to be written. Excerpts follow from my post from 2009 (emphases mine):

There appear to be no records or treatises on abortion for social reasons prior to the ancient Greek Empire in its decline. 

Hippocrates — he of the oath which doctors take — made the first mention of the procedure and instructed physicians of the day not to give an expectant mother drinks or potions fatal to the child in the womb.  By the time he devised the Hippocratic Oath, social abortion was becoming more commonplace among the ancient Greeks.

Social abortion continued when the Roman Empire was in its decline.  They were the first to legalise against it.  The Romans ordered the mother into exile.  Those involved with procuring or administering the necessary potion were exiled to an island if they were from the upper classes or sentenced to work in metal mines if they were from lower social classes. 

The early fathers of the Christian Church wrote the Didache which dealt not only with abortion but also other sins, e.g. witchcraft, which were unknown to the Jews.

Author and lecturer Dr Paul L Williams explains the early opprobrium regarding abortion and how it became infused into Roman society:

‘You shall not kill an unborn child or murder a newborn infant.’ This equation of abortion with homicide was upheld by Tertullian, the father of Latin theology. In his treatise ‘On the Veiling of Virgins’ (206 A.D.), this Church father railed against women who ‘conceal their sinful failures’ by committing ‘homicide’ by means of procured abortions. In 250 A.D., St. Cyprian maintained that abortion represented a crime far worse than ‘parricide’.

A century later, the Church in Spain declared abortion a sin of ‘double damnation’ when it was the result of fornication (pre-marital sex) or adultery.  The guilty woman was forbidden from taking Holy Communion for the rest of her life, including on her deathbed.

Later penalties included those for murderers.  Eventually, any society which had converted to Christianity, like the Visigoths, prohibited abortion.

But, these days, it’s a legal ‘right’. Some ‘progressive’ thinkers would like to extend that ‘right’ to infancy.

Very wrong. Very wrong.