[Nonstatist]

An unborn child's heartbeat can be detected as soon as 18 days after conception...... And since the fetal heartbeat appears on monitors by six weeks into gestation in most cases, supporters of the bill believe that it could prevent thousands of abortions.

So which is it? 18 days or 42 days? This article does not make clear how the bill is written. 42 days would get more votes than 18 days, IMO.

[MacMattico]

I was 3 and a half weeks pregnant when I had a sonogram and saw my daughter's heartbeat. My husband almost fell over in amazement when you could see the tiny heart beating in a child they told us was at the time the size of a grain of rice! I had the sonogram that early due to a medical issue I had that I won't go into, but everything was fine. The doctor told us there was a 75% chance that we could see the heartbeat that early.

[AuH2ORepublican]

“Six weeks into gestation” means around four weeks after conception (gestation is deemed to begin after the mother’s last menses, which is around two weeks prior to ovulation). But I’m not sure why they imply that the fetal heartbeat is first detected by ultrasound six weeks into gestation; ultrasound detected my oldest daughter’s heartbeat around two weeks after conception (in fact, all you could see in the ultrasound was the flickering heartbeat).