Mary Sanchez: When is a heartbeat a heartbeat? Not when Iowa’s GOP says so

“Oh, be still, my beating cardiac activity!”

That rather clunky phrasing doesn’t have quite the emotional muster, the loving fluency or imagery of a human heart, pumping vital blood to organs, now does it?

Which is why, the Iowa legislature tags its new law to virtually ban abortions in the state as being about “fetal heartbeats.”

It’s more imaginative. And, more importantly for the Republicans behind the measure, the language evokes the idea that an embryo has an actual heart at six weeks.

But that’s not true.