In Texas,
They declared a heartbeat alone
enough life to preserve.
I watch my baby girl
Suspended in darkness,
her heart barely blipping at 120 bpm.
She has a tail, paddles for hands and stumps for feet,
two dark spots where eyes will be
and a spinal column.
No head, no brain, nowhere near human,
but a heartbeat pulsing through the womb
I waited my whole life to hear.

In Elizabeth City,
They declared a grown man,
not worth saving.
He had a heartbeat,
and 10 kids, and a spouse, and
four decades of HIStory.
And two hands on the wheel.
The thunder in his chest
pounding in the darkness
until
he was aborted
by people who promised to protect
and serve him.

No more waiting.
No more.

– S.E. Chandler

Author’s Note: This poem is overloaded with emotion for me. Written in May of 2021, its political advocacy around abortion is coupled with social justice commentary on the April 2021 shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. in Elizabeth City, NC. He was my age and lived in my state. While my wife and I were battling infertility to bring our IVF baby girl into the world, it was preposterous for me to see her six-week-old fetus with nothing but a spinal column and a heartbeat and think of her as human. Except she was. She rolled over, as if she were pulling covers over her shoulder and going back to sleep. Her brother, on the other hand, waved his paddles frantically like jazz hands at the same age. To this day, she sleeps later and he is way more active. Were they already who they were about to become? At that point, were they any more significant as a person than Andrew Brown? I don’t know. But it seems infinitely incongruent to me for some groups to fight so hard to save some lives, and fight equally as hard to justify the murder of others. And thus, “Beaten Heart.”