OK: State Lawmaker To File Bill Requiring Ultrasound Before Abortions

http://www.kotv.com/main/home/stories.asp?whichpage=1&id=95554

Legislation that would require abortion clinics to offer ultrasound scans to women seeking an abortion is being drafted by a state lawmaker.

The "Unborn Child Ultrasound Imaging Act" by Representative Kevin Calvey would require abortion clinics to provide women the chance to view an ultrasound 24 hours prior to an abortion.

Ultrasound procedures depict a continuous picture of a fetus on a monitor screen. The Indiana Legislature recently passed similar legislation as part of that state's informed consent requirements.

Anita Fream, chief executive officer at Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma, says the measure will add an extra expense and one more barrier to access for women seeking abortion services.

or what?

for women because they could see early if there were any problems such as ectopic pregnancy or failure to "latch on" that might affect their future childbirth experiences? Also, it would inform the doctor if there were any physical malformations that he/she would need to be aware of before proceeding?

I don't know anymore than what is in the article but I get the impression the sono they take won't reach the hands of or be seen by anyone who has the ability to diagnose..it will simply be to show the woman the sono in hopes of messing w/ her emotions/send her on a guilt trip.

if they do a sono it should be read. Period.

Cretins.

to make the woman feel guilty about having an abortion. If people really want to reduce the number of abortions, they would do a lot more good by working to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies through sex education and availability of reliable birth control, among other things.

to make any observations about deformities etc. The fetus is very small at this stage and I'm not even sure ultra-sound would give a clear image as to what you're looking at. Stupid and wasteful in my opinion.

to the mother rather than the child. Like double uterus, ectopic pregancy, etc. Obviously they can't tell much about the embryo. Women have died after abortions because they had physical problems that had not been discovered before the procedure.

But if nobody reads the sono, it is moot.

women to be OFFERED the ultrasound?

I don't have a problem, in theory, with offering a woman an ultrasound before an abortion (it's not like an ultrasound is BS, like the "abortions will cause your baby pain" or "you'll get breast cancer and want to kill yourself" rhetoric the right wants clinicians to tell their patients, even the ones who are aborting a very wanted pregnancy due to health or fetal abnormality), if she has the right to refuse without pressure.

This would, however, require abortion clinics to have ultrasound equipment and a tech on hand, which they may or may not have already. I'd like to see how much expense and hassle this would add.

but by god we are going to control your uterus. Oklahoma is not a normal place.

abortions occur between 4 and 8 weeks into a pregnancy, what would an ultrasound show? Ultrasounds can't find tumors that size!

Nothing horrific here--just images of fetal development. Of course, most of the pix are much clearer than any sonogram.

http://onteora.schoolwires.com/4370_71121142518/lib/4370_71121142518/fetus.html

The only one that looks remotely human is 5 months old. Images of fetuses terminated that late or later would probably not be so photogenic.

No way a state can force a citizen to have a medical procedure performed on them. I think if someone really challenged forced immunizations they would not have to have them either.

4 weeks
(6 WEEKS after the first day of the last normal menstrual period)

* The embryo is about one-sixth (1/6) of an inch long.
* By the end of the first month, the embryo has a head and a trunk.
* Structures that will become arms and legs, called limb buds, begin to appear.
* The heart, now in a tubular form, begins to beat by the 25th day.

http://www.pregnantpause.org/develop/doh.htm

Watch the video animation.
fetal development video
At Four Weeks
At four weeks from gestation, the human embryo could easily be mistaken for that of another animal , but its bond with its mother is already complex, and becoming more so with each passing day.
video Watch the video animation.

There is a picture, but I don't know how to copy it.

http://health.discovery.com/convergence/ultpregnancy/video.html

Pictures also here: http://www.pregnancy.org/pregnancy/fetaldevelopment1.php

There isn't really much to see. The baby is from 1/8 to 1/6th of an inch at this stage.

Not until week 10 do you see much of a form at all although you might see an eye earlier if you could see it on ultrasound. Ultrasounds were not that clear when I was pregnant. Maybe they are now. By week ten you are getting very close to the end of the first trimester. I can't imagine that abortion is ever a happy choice, but I doubt that giving ultrasounds will have much of an effect on women who choose to have them early. They might affect some women who are seeking abortions later on. Also, even if the legislature can force women to have ultrasounds, it can't force them to look at their ultrasounds. I suspect that many women who have decided to have abortions won't want to see ultrasounds.

I object to this bill because it is an unwarranted intrusion into the privacy of women. The ultrasound will be a record of the fact that the woman had a fetus and aborted it. Should abortion one day be retroactively punishable by law, those records could be used to punish thousands and thousands of women. Of course, the men who impregnated the women would bear no responsibility for anything. Hey! Wouldn't that be a great way to show women who is boss? Keep 'em barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. After all, isn't that what women deserve? And, above all, don't we need more children? How will our race or nation survive if we decrease the birthrate? (intended sarcastically of course)

that they don't want to make ultrasounds freely available to poor pregnant women who cannot afford health care. Hypocrisy in action.