The improvement of ultrasound technology has probably contributed in many cases to the choice for life rather than death for unborn children.
Juxtapose that to the desire of some politicians and the self-interested in the abortion industry to make sure those abortions increase.
From CMR comes this:
Pro-aborts have decided on their main talking points against recent states’ requirements for ultrasounds to be shown to women before abortions. And it’s a doozy.
Pro-aborts are arguing that ultrasounds are invasive.One Democrat running for a state seat even went so far as to call the state required ultrasound “rape by instrumentation.”
The media has picked up on this attack as they’ve clearly been ordered to. I’ve seen the term "invasive" used to describe the ultrasounds dozens of times in the past few days.
[Remember this name:] Rep. Betty Reed, a Democrat from Hillsborough County, [Oklahoma] said the ultrasound exam is an invasive procedure that should not be imposed on women.
AFP writes in a news headline:
Oklahoma lawmakers overrode their governor’s veto Tuesday to enact tough abortion laws that force women to undergo invasive ultrasounds and allow doctors to withhold test results showing fetal defects.
Do these people not realize how abortions are done? Suction tubes, forceps, curettes (sharp knives.) And it’s the ultrasound that’s invasive?
You know, I’m starting to think that pro-aborts will pretty much say or do anything to keep women in the dark.
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Let’s see if I understand this. An ultrasound is invasive. An abortion, especially a late term abortion, is not? Uh, OK. Another specious argument by the merchants of death.
As I understand it, the biggest objection to the law is that there wouldn’t be an exception for rape victims.
The other objection is that it would require what is called a “vaginal probe” ultrasound as opposed to a conventional ultrasound.
There’s a legitimate debate over whether those two provisions are justified (maybe they are) but there would not be nearly as much of an outcry if the bill was modified to get rid of those two issues.
The pro-aborts are really running out of material. How absurd. Ultrasound is invasive? How about when the baby in the womb is grabbed and torn to bits INSIDE his own mother body?
That seems more along the lines of invasive to me.
The ultrasound will prove to be the Rosa Parks of the abortion industry. When faced with seeing their unborn child right before their eyes, the abortionists won’t be able to sell the Mother the lie that ‘it’s only a blob of tissue.’
The good news is that the Oklahoma lawmakers did override the governor. Ms. Reed (and the governor) notwithstanding, Oklahoma is a pretty conservative place. (I lived there for years.)
If it’s early enough in the pregnancy, a vaginal ultrasound is required to look at the child. You can make the case that a vaginal ultrasound is an invasive procedure…but again, in the context of what we’re talking about, I don’t think this is much to ask at all. After all, if you’re going to abort your child, the very least you can do is look at it first and see exactly what you’re choosing to do. I fully support this initiative.
According to the CNA accounts
“The veto override for the first bill passed 81-14 and the override for the second passed 84-12 in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. The Senate overrode the vetoes in two separate 36-12 votes, The Oklahoman reports.”
That’s a fairly overwhelming majority!
The only reason this particular governor is in office in the first place is that 8 years ago, the conservative Republican candidate ran an extremely poor, lackluster campaign, and a strong third-party candidate split the conservative vote.
If ultrasounds are invasive, what about EKGs, thermometers and blood pressure cuffs? Wouldn’t taking someone’s pulse be invasive too?
I’m a Certified Surgical technologist and I have a “expert witness” opinion on what’s invasive or not. Ultrasounds are not invasive.
Just another specious argument. Another lie; nothing new. They just do not want women to really recognize they have choices. They only want one “choice”, which is death, in mind. They do not want expectant moms to see that they are not carrying a blob of “tissue” but a child and so many, when they see this child, change their minds. They don’t want that! They are for death, and for money.
The article may be overlooking something that is important, at least in certain states.
In my state of Maryland, my pro-life group recently tried to help pass an ultrasound bill. It wasn’t to *force* women to undergo ultrasounds. Abortionists need to do an ultrasound already in order to verify how far along a woman is in her pregnancy. The bill would merely require that the abortionist let the woman know that she can view the ultrasound if she wants to — in other words, it would require that the woman has the choice to see the ultrasound.
The bill was voted down upon partisan lines.
re: Rob in Maine — “If ultrasounds are invasive, what about EKGs, thermometers and blood pressure cuffs? Wouldn’t taking someone’s pulse be invasive too?
I’m a Certified Surgical technologist and I have a “expert witness” opinion on what’s invasive or not. Ultrasounds are not invasive.”
The law mandates a transvaginal ultrasound, not the transabdominal procedure you seem to be thinking of. The transvaginal procedure, which involves insertion of the transducer into the body, is arguably invasive — although not nearly as much so as a D&C. Go figure…
Forgive the following indelicate language, but a transvaginal ultrasound is about as invasive as inserting a tampon. Yes, I’ve had one done. They are required for very new pregnancies so if the majority of women are seeking abortions around the 6 week mark, then, yes, a transvaginal U/S would be performed. As others have noted, unless a chemical abortion is being performed, a woman will be subject to several invasive moments with surgical abortion.
There is no Hillsborough County in Oklahoma. I don’t think this lady is from Oklahoma. It’s a long story how we ended up with a democrat for governor, but Oklahoma is a very conservative state. Even our one democratic congressman, Dan Boren, voted against the healthcare bill.
Indelicate language is going to happen with this topic … I found v. ultrasound to be a horrendous and humiliating experience, but comparing it to an abortion is like comparing catching the flu to getting radiation poisoning.
Only by refusing to understand HOW an abortion is done does their argument make any sense. Even an early abortion is invasive and violent (and I’m just talking about the actions the woman experiences …not even bringing up the torture and murder of the child) and then there are all the emotional issues afterward. It’s an argument driven by ignorance and false compassion.
Betty Reed is a state rep from Hillsborough County FL, not OK.
Indelicacy is, sadly, inevitable here.
That said, perhaps it’s because I’ve been there, done that, or because I’ve been assisting at the labor and delivery of cats, dogs and horses for years . . . but an IV ultrasound, like any other OB/GYN procedure, is just all in the day’s work. I didn’t find it even mildly annoying, certainly not to be compared even to a Pap smear. Actually, it was kind of fun because my OB/GYN, a great guy with no nonsense about him, let me watch the monitor and pointed out items of interest.
Claiming that a routine procedure that requires no incision, surgical equipment, or discomfort is “invasive” is a perversion of the language to suit a political goal – Newspeak at its worst.
If abortion were just a medical procedure, and fetuses were just extraneous bits of maternal tissue, abortionists wouldn’t mind showing women their ultrasounds. It would just be something interesting for the patient to watch while the abortionist used the imaging to help with the procedure.
So clearly, they don’t think it’s the same as aspirating cysts in your breasts, or any of a number of other surgical procedures where doctors are eager to let you watch.
Despite my undying opposition to abortion, as a final year medical student I find this law quite unhelpful. While it is a generally accepted principle of medical ethics that a doctor must always provide his patient with sufficient information on a procedure to enable the patient to give informed consent, this law presumes that the consent to undergo abortion is already given when the patient is scanned (otherwise there would be no point in performing the scan); how viewing the ultrasound is of any help to the patient in regards to the abortion procedure escapes me.
Of course I fully appreciate that the intention is to make the mother change her mind and thus save the child from being aborted as well as sparing the mother the moral and emotional consequences of abortion. However this does not change the fact that the procedure of forcing a mother who is already determined to abort to view her ultrasound is designed to make her feel as bad as possible about her decision, and this makes it very questionable from both a medical and a general moral standpoint. It is also not clear what good would come of it; in some instances it might make the mother change her mind, in others it might precipitate feelings of guilt and depression without doing anything towards hindering the abortion.
Whatever the good intentions, I do not believe that doctors should be required to force their patients to do anything against their will.
Better to wait and pray for the day when the whole sorry business can be banned altogether.
It seems to me that the pro-aborts are not so upset about the ultrasound itself as they are about the effect it has on a woman. If women have been leaving in tears, perhaps they have actually been making some “informed decisions” that have cost the clinics some money. Better that women leave in tears and make the right “choice” than they participate in the death of their children and mourn the rest of their lives, and possibly, for eternity. Do these same pro-abortion politicians feel for the women in China who are dragged from hiding to undergo forced abortions, or for women in Mexico who are sterilized without their consent? It seems that the culture of death only advocates one choice.
Gideon,
viewing the ultrasound helps to the mother in regards to the abortion procedure because she has been lied to.
Do you really think that the doctor has told the woman anything other than “this is an unwanted mass of tissue” and that it is “morally equivalent to removing a hangnail”?
Gideon Ertner,
When a sin occurs, guilt is appropriate. It opens the door to repentance.
Gideon, I don’t suppose you have seen any of the Lila Rose undercover videos made at Abortion Clinics. (Youtube-Lila Rose) In most of them she goes undercover as a minor seeking an abortion. She tells them she is a very young minor and that the baby’s father is 20-30 years old. They coach her to lie or omit information. But, in other videos, as a very young teen pretending to want an abortion at an early stage, she is told lies about the baby that there is no brain activity, no limbs, no nothing practically. Planned Parenthood, et. al., are not interested in informed consent. They are interested in lies and above all, cash.
I don’t think you would want to practice ‘medicine’ like this.
Having had one of these transvaginal ultrasounds, I think I can say that it’s not much more
“invasive” than how a person got pregnant in the first place. Obviously, the tech is there and performing the procedure, but in my experience, it is all done quite chastely. And honestly, who wouldn’t want to know what’s going on inside her body?
The pro-aborts are having to face the reality of what it is they do. That, alone, is causing the discomfort here, not the ultrasound procedure itself.
“lawmakers overrode their governor’s veto Tuesday to enact tough abortion laws that … allow doctors to withhold test results showing fetal defects.”
Now, I find this objectionable, if the story is accurately written.
No doctor should ever be allowed to “withold test results” (in other words, lie).
I predict that if nothing else, the law will be overturned on this feature alone. And rightly so.
“Gideon, I don’t suppose you have seen any of the Lila Rose undercover videos made at Abortion Clinics.”
In fact, I have seen a couple of them. I have great respect for her work.
“viewing the ultrasound helps to the mother in regards to the abortion procedure because she has been lied to.”
That is probably often the case, but it is irrelevant to the moral argument outlined above.
If the issue is that doctors often misrepresent the facts concerning abortion, the state ought to promulgate laws that require physicians to inform their patients properly before consent is obtained for the abortion (i.e. during the initial interview), not afterwards (during the examination). This could be done by, e.g., showing her pictures of how babies look at the relevant gestational age. It is the forcing upon the mother of additional information after she has made a firm resolution to go forward with the procedure that I believe is morally and medico-ethically objectionable.
re: tcn – “Having had one of these transvaginal ultrasounds, I think I can say that it’s not much more
“invasive” than how a person got pregnant in the first place.”
Keep in mind that you had consented to the procedure. To extend your analogy, consider the difference between consensual intercourse and date rape.
The really asinine thing about her argument is this: ultrasounds are routinely done as a part of the abortion procedure. The only difference is now the woman will actually get to see her child before she has it assassinated (they should merely consider it informed consent).
Jerry: Rape accounts for considerably less than 1 percent of abortions performed in this country. I expect the mother would be treated somewhat differently were the child the product of rape, but the difference in the aftermath of abortion would be no different to the child, nor, in the long run, to the mother. Murder remains murder.
These people will stop at nothing to keep abortion “a sacrament” of their horrid secular ideology.
Forget about science. Forget about the fact that unborn children at very early stages of development can feel pain…this is just hideous.
And, unless someone calls them on it and puts it “in their face”, they will continue to rant and rave like demons…they LOVE the death of the unborn; they are absolutely craven and demon-possessed and need our prayers and acts of penance; esp. acts of deliverance from the demon of abortion, which is driving this truck. Jesus, mercy. Our Lady and St. Joseph, pray for us!
And, “invasive”?
No way.
This is just rhetoric here; there is objectively a human life, apart from the mother, who is alive.
I had an echo-cardiogram last week. It was not pleasant. But invasive? I don’t think so…this is just another stalling tactic of the “death-agents” so that they can have free reign to dispose of any life that isn’t fit to exist.
Nice, huh?
Welcome to the 21st Century…just you watch; it’ll be us senior citizens and handicapped/terminal/diseased ones, next.
They don’t want a world where people suffer and are “less than human”.
What a horrible situation we have placed ourselves in by not being more adamant about overturning Roe V. Wade.
Our generation is going to take the punishment for this; get ready for “suicide clinics” like they have in the Netherlands, folks.
I’ve had many invasive procedures done over the past five years for a life-threatening illness, but, sadly, not one was as invasive as the abortion I submitted to many years ago. I was coerced into it, and sound of that hideous vacuum cleaner suction machine is something I remember daily. As someone said above, these people lie to you from the start. They have no regard for the child or the mother, nor do they care to hear from you years later when you start to fall apart. They are the ones who INVADE a woman’s body, heart, mind and soul!
Just as I was shown my damaged liver prior to being put on a transplant list, shouldn’t I have also been shown the image of the baby they were about to destroy? I can assure you, it would have completely changed my decision, as the doctor had told me it was only a “cluster of cells.”
You can tell they are getting really, really desperate when they begin to use such outrageous language. Science and God are on our side. And I now work as a tireless anti-abortion advocate with Silent No More Awareness.
Catherine: I am so sorry for all you were put through.
Know in your mind and in your heart that Jesus loves you, forgives you and embraces you.
How awful to be put through this hideous procedure.
God bless you for your efforts in your work against the killing of the unborn.
You are a victim, but a survivor, in the Heart of Jesus.
Blessings to you, dearest.
Dear Catherine, I, too, am so sorry for what you had to go through. I rejoice to hear that
you have found help, healing and forgiveness. May God continue to bless your good work with the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. There is real power in the stories women tell of their experiences of abortion, power to change hearts and minds and lives are being saved. Thank you for your brave work on behalf of the lives of unborn children. I offer a prayer that you will also be healed of your other physical illness.
God bless you.
Catherine,
Thank you for your witness. May God bless you abundantly.
Invalid arguments from the pro-aborts? If not invalid, definitely unsound!
Gideon,
I still do not understand. If, as you correctly state, an ultrasound provides additional information to the mother (that may affect her decision) how is it that you continue to insist that she has “made a firm resolution” based on “informed consent” when she has not been provided with all the information?
Also, if I may be blunt, why you are soft pedaling this issue? Abortion is gravely and objectively evil. It is not simply a “procedure” that you “think is morally objectionable”. Why does your primary concern seem to be with the “rights” of the mother, instead of the rights of God or the rights of the child?