That’s Gloria Feldt, the president of Planned Parenthood, talking. She’s explaining why she and other pro-aborts oppose a bill introduced in Congress recently by Rep. Cliff Sterns, R-Fla.— one that would help pregnancy crisis centers obtain ultrasound machines.
Sure, Sterns and his fellow pro-lifers may say it’s to help poor women get better health care—to “get the information to make an informed choice,” according to Tom Glessner, president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates.
The same rationale is being heard in Indiana, where two state legislators, Steve Johnson and Michael Young, have introduced a bill that would give pregnant women there the “look-and-listen” option. Expectant mothers would be free to accept, or decline, the chance to see the baby on ultrasound and listen to his heartbeat.
But we know the real reason, don’t we? Because pregnant women who actually get to see their unborn child are far less likely to opt for abortion.
How much less likely? Before ultrasound was available at one Massachusetts clinic, “A Women’s Concern,” clients decided against abortion about 40 to 50 percent of the time, Rev. John Ensor told Massachusetts News. But after they could see for themselves the child growing inside them, that figure rose to 77 percent. Similar results are being reported in other clinics around the country, the News informed its readers. Wisconsin, for example, saw its abortion rate cut in half.
Well, no wonder Feldt smells a rat. She caught Sterns red-handed, trying to help women make that informed “choice” she and her colleagues are always harping about. C’mon Cliff, did you think one of the masters of “political propaganda” was going to let you get away with playing the same game?
Were she operating out of India, though, Feldt might be supporting ultrasounds. An Associated Press report shows that authorities in that country are concerned about the fact that the number of abortions has gone up lately because of the devices. The cultural pressures to have a male child there are intense, and parents who learn through ultrasound that they’re going to have a daughter often opt for abortion.
But no, Feldt’s our problem. So is Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), who’s just as upset that ultrasound helps drive down the number of abortions. “It never fails to amaze me how little respect they have for women’s capacity to understand what goes on in our bodies,” she said.
If I follow her—and how likely is that, me being a Neanderthal pro-lifer and all—women have this natural understanding of what’s happening inside. Ultrasound’s an insult. Modern medicine can add nothing to our own infallible sense of what’s going on.
All right, let’s get rid of them. But no, Michelman admits they have value—it’s just that pro-lifers are misusing them. They “have one purpose in mind: to intimidate women out of choosing abortion” (something that, like government spending, apparently can only go up). Perhaps if we can clear our minds of this tainted motive, we can all go back to using ultrasounds in peace.
Worse, pro-lifers are “using government money” to promote ultrasound, Michelman reports. Well, now we’ve really stolen a page from their playbook. As readers of HLI Reports are well aware, pro-aborts such as Planned Parenthood specialize in using taxpayer dollars to promote abortion. Indeed, they couldn’t survive without “government money.”
Dinah Farrington of Planned Parenthood’s Indiana branch is just as nonplussed. “To have an ultrasound prior to an abortion has nothing to do with making the procedure safer or addressing the health of the woman,” she told the Indianapolis Star. “It’s simply a matter of the picture of the contents of the uterus.”
Tell that to Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the famous former abortionist who credits ultrasound with completely altering his worldview. Tell that to the parents who see towering lies about a “blob of tissue” crumble in an instant.
“There is a real change when a woman sees her baby,” says Rod Murphy, director of the Problem Pregnancy center in Worcester, Mass. “Even some of the guys have tears well up.” How much better than the tears of regret that often follow an abortion.
(This article courtesy of HLI Reports, a publication of Human Life International.)
