An Ultra Sound Idea

For all of the reasons given above, abortion lobbyists are also fuming at the prospect of giving pregnancy care centers ultrasound equipment (and, to compound the horror, using tax dollars!). Gloria Feldt, Planned Parenthood's president–who on a recent "O'Reilly Factor" could not form her mouth to concede that a "fetus" is an "unborn child"–charged: "They're using medical technology as political propaganda." If so, it's still a better use of ultrasound technology than the use it serves in Planned Parenthood's clinics to guide the tools of dismemberment.

NARAL president Kate Michelman also denounced the idea: "It never fails to amaze me how little respect they have for women's capacity to understand what goes on in our bodies. I faced a crisis pregnancy after having three children, and I didn't need anyone to show me a sonogram to inform me that my pregnancy would result in giving birth to a person." Supporters of the proposed legislation, "have one purpose in mind – to intimidate women out of choosing abortion, and using government money to do that. That is wrong." Oh, sure. Government funding is a good and necessary thing for UNFPA to support coercive abortion and sterilization overseas; government funding is "a matter of equal justice" to pay for abortions for teens and low-income women; and it's great for the full arsenal of abortifacient "contraceptives," condoms, and "how-to and why-not" sex education courses, but somehow it's wrong if it'll make a woman think twice before rushing into an abortion decision that she's likely to regret the rest of her life.

That's the real problem with ultrasound equipment–it's BAD FOR BUSINESS. It reveals the humanity of the child, a fact pointedly neglected in abortion clinic counseling and paperwork with its language of procedures and tissues and products of conception. Few women are so utterly driven to desperation that they will choose death for the little child seen nestled under their heart, whose wriggling arms and toes and lively heartbeat awakens a profound instinct in both parents to love and protect their "baby."

At "A Woman's Concern" pregnancy help center in the greater Boston area, about 40-50% of clients would decide against abortion before they offered ultrasound. Now, 77% of those receiving ultrasound decide to keep their baby. At a center in Columbus, which before ultrasound had only about 20% of clients choosing life, that rate grew to 95% of clients who have seen their babies on ultrasound. According to Tom Glessner, president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, centers typically see a three-fold increase in the numbers of abortion-minded clients who choose life, bringing that category into the 90% range and better.

All things considered, the $3 million Rep. Stearns will seek to put ultrasound equipment in qualified pregnancy help centers sounds like money that will be very well spent.