The Indypendent e-news
By Eleanor J. Bader
When Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul, a Texas Congressman, addressed the National Right to Life Committee in June, he told the audience about his friend, former abortion provider Bernard Nathanson. “Nathanson did 65,000 abortions before the ultrasound came out, but when he saw the beating heart, he couldn’t do them anymore,” Paul reported. “If we’re going to end abortion, people have to look at the baby [sic].” Anti-abortionists agree and have introduced mandatory sonogram legislation in state legislatures across the country. Their intent is to force women to view ultrasound footage before having an abortion. Idaho and Mississippi already impose this requirement and 11 states require abortion providers to apprise patients of their right to see a sonogram if they desire.Sonograms — high-frequency sound waves that float through the amniotic sac, abdomen and pubic cavity to create an image of the fetus and placenta — are routinely used to confirm fetal age and due date, check embryo growth and development, identify ectopic pregnancies and forecast gender. They are performed by obstetricians, gynecologists and abortion providers five to six weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period. In addition, nearly one quarter of the country’s approximately 3,000 Crisis Pregnancy Centers use them to harangue women into carrying their pregnancies to term.
As those opposed to abortion see it, once a woman views the fetus, she will be unable to end its life. Richard Land, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commissioner of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention, is widely credited for popularizing this idea. “If wombs had windows,” he says, “people would be much more reticent to abort babies because they would be forced to confront the evident humanity of the baby from very early gestation onward. Pregnant mothers who see their babies on sonograms are far more likely to carry their babies to term.”
Not true, say abortion providers. Instead, they see the campaign as little more than guilt-mongering and charge that it infantilizes women because it assumes that they have no understanding of what they are about to do when they enter a clinic. “Look,” says Peg Johnston, director of Southern Tier Women’s Services in Vestal, New York, “women are not always clear about the stages of fetal development, but they always know that if they don’t have an abortion they will have a kid. Of course they know this is about life. Seeing a sonogram may make them feel bad, but they will still have their abortions and then go home and continue their lives.”
Equally insidious, Johnston continues, is the fact that mandatory ultrasounds intrude into the relationship between doctor and patient. “In our field the relationship between the woman and her physician is everything. If providers have to do ultrasounds, they will, but the doctor will be sure to say, ‘The state requires me to show you X, Y and Z.’ They will distance themselves from the requirement to preserve their relationship with the patient.”
Cristina Page, author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America, likens the requirement to taunting since virtually all clinics already allow a woman who wishes to see a sonogram to do so. “If seeing an ultrasound before an abortion becomes required, so should telling the woman that an embryo/fetus cannot feel pain before the twentieth week of pregnancy,” she says.
What’s more, Page says that forcing women who are terminating pregnancies due to developmental abnormalities —often not discovered until late in the second trimester — to view fetal images amounts to vindictive cruelty. While she believes that “more information is always a good thing,” she says that forcing ultrasounds on women is unnecessary.
Not surprisingly, the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Medical Women’s Association oppose forcing women to view the fetus. They argue that the test should be used as a medical tool, not a political sledgehammer. Nonetheless, they — as well as abortion clinics and their allies — expect numerous fights on this issue during the 2007-2008 legislative session. Once more, two distinct worldviews will face off. Time will tell whether the law will opt to treat women as capable decision makers or, like Ron Paul and Richard Land, will treat them like children in need of protection, mindless souls who know not what they do.
Illustration By Shira Golding
Comments
Interesting how you single out Ron Paul as some kind of zealot in your thesis, although he has never supported mandatory ultrasounds.
Saying that women ought to look at an ultrasound before making their decision is quite different from forcing them to and/or forcing taxpayers to fund the ultrasounds.
Texas Congressman Ron Paul addressed the National Right to Life Committee in June. Watch the speech on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXZpuIXEzWk
or visit
http://www.ronpaul2008.com
and read his positions unfiltered.
I work at an abortion clinic and we do ultrasounds to determine length of pregnancy. Most of our patients want to look at the ultrasound and they are actually relieved to know it doesn't look like much of anything, usually just a sac with a jellybean shape in it, is how most of them describe it. So they can try to pass this law and maybe 1 or 2 girls will change their mind, but most of the patients that come to our clinic have already made their choice. I think they need to stop wasting the tax payers dollars on another useless abortion regulation. They could put all that money towards educating people on safe sex practices and birth control methods. People are going to have sex, its human nature, lets give them the knowledge to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.
Please print a retraction stating that Dr. Paul does not support using taxpayer money to force ultrasounds on women. He is a constitutionalist and would never support such frivolous spending. While he would encourage doctors to have pregnant patients do this, he would never use taxpayer money to do this. Your article makes it seem as if he is a part of this movement, this is not the case. Dr. Paul wishes for Roe Vs Wade to be overturned and for states to have the decision as opposed to the federal government. He does not support the federal government having anything to do with this decision unless it concerns defining life, which he believes begins at conception.
Many libertarian and liber-anarcos are singing Paul's praises but he gives me pause. Whenever anti-racist groups show up at anti-immigration rallies (the New Jersey ones come to mind), openly neo-Nazi groups and the angry white guy crowd are Paul's biggest supporters.
I think Ron Paul shows up on Indymedia's radar because he's against the war. But he's against the war on the America First platform, not because the Iraq war is based on lies and its illegal and immoral. These are key differences.
Not to mention that Ron Paul, as Bader points out, is a virulently anti-choice.
I have read "The Hand of God" by Bernard Nathanson and found it to be a rather sterile but am glad it was written. I too used to buy into the notion that "this is my body, I can do what I want to with it" that so many American's feel today. Like many young women, we have grown up in the aftermath of the feminist era that our mothers worked so hard to give to us. Thank you mom, but it only made it easier for dad to walk out. Actually, did too many of you feel that Dad wasn’t even necessary? How many of us are from broken homes? Yes, they were around long before R-V-Wade, but in no where near the numbers we live in today. Right now, my son is growing up in two separate households and I wish it could have been different for him. How easy would it have been for him to not even be here. A few hundred dollars and my broken marriage could have remained broken. He wouldn’t have to have two Christmas’ or have to live with Mommy one week and Daddy the next. But he does….and I thank God for opening my eyes long ago.
You see, we have been raised in a very selfish era. It’s all about me me me. What’s best for me? Why am I not getting what I want? Why me?
Why not me?
Unfortunately, many young women who have an abortion, don’t really think about the consequences. I’m not talking about the possible physical risk, I’m talking about the toll it takes on a women’s mind. That little voice of reason you have telling you that what you are thinking about doing is wrong….that you are ending a life….that you are about to scar your soul deeper then any man ever could because this choice is yours….is right. Listen to it sweetie. You will look into the eyes of the children around you for the rest of your life and wonder. Wonder about that little baby that would be looking at you like you are God. You can smother that longing with drugs and alcohol, but you will never be complete again. I promise you. And if you don’t feel that way, I pray for you. No one needs to know that deep regret.
The simple and hard to face fact is….when that sperm meets that egg, a miracle has happened. A new soul has become. Your body no longer is yours. It is now a vessel of life…and hope…and promise…a future you may have never had. Give it to that child. You can never err on the side of life.
Mom wasn’t right about giving me the choice to kill her grandchild, but she did give me life. Thank you mom. I now know what it means to truly love another person. Thank you God for Christopher Giovanni. His love has made me complete.
Abortions have been happening since women have been getting pregnant. They are not the result of the selfishness of a generation. And you, Michelle, are extraordinarily arrogant in your contention that if you have an abortion, "[Y]ou will never be complete again. I promise you." You disgust me.
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Lucy
http://maternitymotherhood.net
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