Ultrasounds are the single easiest way to prevent abortion. An article from the New England Journal of Medicine which reports that “when ten pregnant women came to an abortion clinic and were shown ultrasound pictures of the fetus before the abortion, only one went through with the abortion. Nine left the clinic pregnant.” The same thing which makes ultrasound images so remarkable is the thing that makes abortion so dreadful. It’s fairly easy to defend abortion in the abstract, but when you see the tiny bodies up close and realize the violence abortion does to them, the conclusion is fairly obvious. Abortion is a grisly business.
The American public is more pro-life than ever before. And contained in the Virginia bills is a requirement that the abortion provider offer the woman an opportunity to see the image of her unborn child. This is the last thing an abortion provider wants. For too long, the abortion industry has been trying to hide information from women. The most accurate, truthful information we can give to a woman is an ultrasound picture of her unborn child.
The abortion industry hates these bills because they allow a woman to see what abortion providers so fervently try to hide: life.
Sonogram laws inform women. They don’t restrict abortion in any way. A woman can still have an abortion for any old reason at all. But the law makes sure she knows what she is doing. Unfortunately, many of them don’t.
Case in point:
A group of the law’s supporters traveled to New Orleans for Wednesday’s hearing. Nona Ellington, 43, of Houston, said she wasn’t given the choice of having a sonogram before she had an abortion in 1983 at age 15. Ellington said she was told her fetus was a “blob of tissue” before she had the abortion, which she blames for five subsequent miscarriages.
“I would not have had an abortion if I had seen a sonogram and heard the baby’s heartbeat,” she said after the hearing.
Ellington has also said in public testimony that her abortion led her to depression and suicide attempts, and that because of the damage done to her body by the abortion, she was never able to conceive.
Who is CRR — and other detractors of the law — trying to protect? What harm will come to a woman from knowing the truth? Don’t they want women to make an informed choice? Is their mission really about empowering women, and if so, what will they lose by making sure she has all the information she needs?
Let’s say a woman sees a sonogram, hears a heartbeat, and says, “Oh wow, I didn’t realize this was really a baby I was going to destroy. I don’t want to have an abortion now.” Who loses in that case? The woman goes away happy because she is going to keep her baby. The baby, needless to say, is certainly better off. Who loses, and what does he or she lose?
The abortion doctor and the clinic lose. And what do they lose? Money. Nothing else. They have not been harmed in any way, except they will not be performing that abortion. The woman, on the other hand, has gained a child she would not have had. The child has gained a life he would have lost.
Abortion advocates such as the people at CRR claim they are helping women, but all they’re doing is denying them knowledge and therefore power. Pretty important, considering they claim they’re all about empowering women.
How does denying a woman information about her developing fetus empower her?
And they have the nerve to call the Sonogram Law condescending.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/i-would-not-have-had-an-abortion-if-i-had-seen-a-sonogram
So why do abortion providers avoid showing ultrasound images to women? Perhaps this is because up to 78% of women who see an ultrasound of their babies choose not to have abortions.
http://www.jillstanek.com/2013/02/real-reason-abortion-providers-oppose-ultrasounds-78-change-minds/
The taxpayer funded abortion factory Planned Parenthood making millions in profits by preying on women, specifically minorities and teenagers, seems to think a woman seeing her baby before making the ultimate decision to end her pregnancy is an “abhorrent” standard. The classification comes after a federal appeals court upheld a law that requires doctors to give women considering an abortion an ultrasound and full information before performing the procedure.
Writing for the court, Chief Judge Edith Jones was frank about the other side’s failure “to demonstrate constitutional flaws with the law,” which requires women to have a sonogram 24 hours before an abortion. Judge Jones said the state has “legitimate interests in protecting the potential life within her.” “Denying her up-to-date medical information,” Jones wrote, “is more of an abuse to her ability to decide than providing the information.” Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement that the Fifth Circuit ruling “sets an abhorrent precedent” as other states prepared to consider similar laws to help women receive factual information about their baby and his or her development before making a life or death decision to have an abortion.
What Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council finds abhorrent is Richards’ reaction to the ruling.
“Her organization recognizes that the biggest weapon in the abortion debate is the ultrasound machine,” Perkins said. “For thousands of women, this window into the womb is the only persuasion they need to reconsider abortion. And, as Richards’s group has proved, pro-abortion activists will do everything in their power to stop mothers from recognizing the personhood of their unborn babies.”
Perkins is right, ultrasounds decrease the chance of a woman having an abortion significantly. Abortion is big business for Planned Parenthood and the acceptance of a child in the womb as life, viewable through an ultrasound, threatens them. Not to mention it is really disgusting the president of a taxpayer funded organization, views a mother’s ability to see and hear her baby’s beating heart before choosing to take it away as “abhorrent.”
“I just got back from Planned Parenthood,” a visibly distraught young lady says in a YouTube video posted on January 19. She had just picked up records from a Planned Parenthood abortion that happened six years earlier. She says Planned Parenthood falsified the records regarding her age at the time of the abortion.
Struggling to maintain her composure, she sifts through the abortion records until she finds the ultrasound report. It indicates that she was offered and took advantage of the opportunity to view the image of her son prior to the abortion. She flatly denies that.
“I never saw my ultrasound,” she says. “I was told nothing was visible, and I was told that it wouldn’t matter—you couldn’t see a heartbeat, you couldn’t see anything. . . . I wouldn’t know what I was looking at.”
She displays the ultrasound form, which says that she requested and was given a copy of the image. “I wasn’t ever given a picture of my son. But when I went to Planned Parenthood today and I got all of the records, I saw that ultrasound for the very first time—about six years later,” she says, choking back tears. She points to an image in which she says she can see her baby’s heart beating.
She appeals to Planned Parenthood and to the people who support it with a heartfelt cry:
I just want to know why I was denied seeing this. You say that women don’t change their minds because of it. I don’t know if I would have, but if I had, would it have been so bad? You talk about choice, and all this crap, but when we want to pass laws about women having to see their ultrasound before having an abortion, [you say] that’s wrong. So basically, what you are saying is you don’t want to give them full choice. You just want them to pick your choice.
“I can’t even explain how much I sobbed when I saw that.”
http://www.stopp.org/article.php?id=11554
David Pomerantz is, in many ways, the new face of the pro-life movement. He doesn’t call women baby killers or hold a giant picture of an aborted fetus. He doesn’t scream or throw holy water. His goal is to stop abortion, to save babies, by helping mothers. Once he gets them on the van, they’re offered a free pregnancy test and an ultrasound. A trained counselor and a sonographer are there to assuage any fears the mothers might have. They want to change minds with kindness, and the idea is spreading. In the eight months Pomerantz has been doing this in Dallas, he has been contacted by multiple groups from all over the country hoping to start mobile ultrasound units of their own.
See Also:
Ultrasound Informed Consent Act Petition
http://nationalprolifealliance.com/uicaa_petition.aspx?pid=0323b&npla=HNAHAA13I
