Earlier today there was a claim made on Twitter about a premature baby at a detention center:

The mother is in a wheelchair and the infant is listless, premature, and is wrapped in a dirty towel. The Flores lawyers has requested urgent care for the child and even called 911. 2

— Holly Cooper #LiyahIsFree (@abogadatejana) June 13, 2019

Actress Alyssa Milano was one of the people tweeting about it and her tweet got the attention of Sen. Jeff Merkley:

After my emergency call to DHS, they say this family will be released immediately. Thanks for all who raised the alarm on this critical situation. No child should be subjected to this kind of treatment. This cruelty must be stopped or lives will continue to be lost. https://t.co/wPvTed7kn7

— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) June 13, 2019

At some point, Milano decided to spike the football, so to speak, by calling all pro-lifers hypocrites:

Asylum seekers have heartbeats.

So take your fake “pro-life” hypocrisy and shove it where the sun don’t shine.

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) June 13, 2019

Milano’s argument only works if you assume that pro-lifers a) don’t know asylum seekers have heartbeats or b) support letting asylum seekers die despite the fact that they have heartbeats. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest the number of people who believe a or b is vanishingly small if not zero. As numerous people pointed out to Milano, what this comparison really does is make a good case against abortion:

Nobody is advocating for killing asylum seekers with heartbeats. But abortion activists ARE advocating for killing unborn babies with heartbeats.

— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) June 13, 2019

Sorry, was somebody advocating rending them limb from limb without anesthesia then selling their remains to the highest bidder? Did I miss something?

— Lady 🇺🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Purrl (@AmericanPurrl) June 13, 2019

I liked this one:

https://twitter.com/dogadobo/status/1139254767144669184

Glad we’re on the same page on the value of heartbeats. So let’s provide Border Patrol the resources necessary to humanely process everyone, and also protect the unborn. Oh, what’s that? You think people should be able to kill the unborn? So you’re just being a hack again. https://t.co/PiUxoKR9tE

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 13, 2019

Anyway, you get the point. We don’t stop the hearts of people crossing the border illegally. In fact, Border Patrol agents go to great lengths to protect children at the border. But the kicker here, as Ben Shapiro points out, is that even if every pro-lifer suddenly agreed to abandon border controls and let people cross the border at will (as if that made any sense), Milano still wouldn’t reciprocate by defending the heartbeats of the unborn.

Speaking of hacks making dumb arguments, I feel like Milano may have borrowed this from AOC who offered a similar argument on Twitter a few weeks ago. I offered a response to that one at the time:

Did ICE officials remove the baby with forceps ensuring its death? If so, I join you in supporting prosecution.

— John Sexton (@verumserum) May 31, 2019

For the record, as someone who is pro-life and supports border security, I don’t think pro-lifers are the hypocrites here. I don’t think they would support the death of any child, regardless of immigration status. But if premature babies deserve care because they have a heartbeat, shouldn’t unborn babies get the same care because they also have a heartbeat? I’m pretty confident that AOC and Alyssa Milano don’t support that and never have.