WashPo blogger: Informed consent before abortion “sexist” because “father of the fetus” doesn’t participate
Experts agree that there’s usually no medical reason for an ultrasound in the first trimester of a pregnancy. Rather, such a requirement is a naked psychological ploy to assault the mother with feelings of guilt and play on her emotions to stop her from going not go through [sic] the procedure.
Even though abortion is legal within limits, this extra requirement would be both medieval and insulting. Not to mention sexist. Men, especially the father of the fetus, don’t have to go through the extra hurdle of having their choice of whether they decided to view the ultrasound stuck in a file somewhere.
~ Peter Galuszka, Washington Post, January 30
[Photo of 11-week ultrasound via pregnancycheck.com]
Jan.31, 2012 6:00 am |
Ultrasound |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
“Even though abortion is legal within limits, this extra requirement would be both medieval and insulting.”
Yes, nothing more reminiscent of the dark ages than 3-D ultrasounds and informed consent before a decision that can never be reversed. I’d be willing to bet you would be more likely to find leaches in another one of those shady run-down abortion mills than a pro-life pregnancy center.
The man who impregnated has no legal say in how the pregnancy turns out.
Requiring pregnant women to view what is inside them is 100% reasonable and fair. It helps them make an INFORMED decision! It should always be mandatory.
Forced Information is here! Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
This statement doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense! I had a 6-week ultrasound when I was pregnant; it was just routine for the doctor is establish a healthy implantation and a baseline for gestational age. When this issue came up in the Chicago Trib,a few months ago I actually called our local PP and verified that they DO in fact do ultrasounds before every abortion because it is medically necessary (I had been hammered in the comments by folks who felt that an ultrasound was unnecessarily invasive, with the court ordering an unimportant medical test). And if they are doing a medical test, shouldn’t the patient have full access to the information learned through the test? If Fathers were allowed any say whatsoever in the abortion decision, maybe the author here would have a point. But they’re not. You can’t have it both ways. Ultrasounds are necessary and need to be performed. When they are performed, women should be able to see and understand the ultrasound. This is just a no-brainer!
It is hard to take any journalist seriously when he begins a sentence with, “Experts agree…”
And if the father was made to view the ultrasound, you’d be whining about how a man is trying to impose on a woman’s decision.
Seriously, I don’t get what is so invasive about an ultrasound. I’ve had them before and the only inconvenience was a full bladder.
Again-why do they never shriek when abortionists perform ultrasound guided abortions? Not medieval enough for them? The very least they can do is look at the human being they’re about to kill. Gutless wonders, all of them.
@Kate
It’s very invasive into their profits.
@EH
” I had a 6-week ultrasound when I was pregnant; it was just routine for the doctor is establish a healthy implantation and a baseline for gestational age.”
You and your medieval doctor, don’t you know blind guessing is FAR more reliable?
I have no idea who this guy is listening to as experts (CC, Reality, Megan?) however doing an ultrasound early on in pregnancy is usually medically indicated to determine 3 factors: confirms the pregnancy (which is a legally verifiable medical condition), determines inter-uterine development (it’s not a ectopic!) and gestational age of the child.
As an ectopic is a deadly condition for the mother if not caught early-on, it’s critically important to conduct an ultrasound, particularly if the mother has had prior abortions (which tend to scar and cause uterine anomalies).
So it’s not a naked ploy – his claims are groundless.
Additionally, since when does having more information about your own medical condition prove detrimental to your decision-making process?
On the other hand – not being fully informed by your physician borders on, or may be outright malpractice. I can give an actual account of such an instance when it came to my own personal surgery. My physician withheld information about his experience with the procedure I was electing. While he was qualified to do it, he wasn’t comfortable or familiar. When I had the surgery done – the surgeon elected to use an alternate procedure – one I hadn’t chosen. I still came out okay, but it completely altered my recovery and what I expected as an outcome.
Galuska is lacking sound arguments.
Ultrasound is also a valuable diagnostic tool in determining other illnesses and life threatening conditions in women-but the ‘caring for women’ crowd could care less about those.
I have had four pregnancies and in every case I had a first trimester ultrasound for the reasons people have already stated (checking implantation, gestational age, etc). Sure, the baby looked like a peanut, but it was done all the same. And I have an “evil” HMO! For one of them, it was very medically necessary. My doctor needed to confirm that I did indeed have a miscarriage. So, I don’t know what “experts” the author consulted, but perhaps their field of expertise is NOT medicine.
And in what world is it “sexist” to allow women to have some privacy during a medical examination? If I were in an unhealthy or harmful relationship, I would certainly want the guy OUT of the examination room. This is privacy 101. What happened to supporting women, abortion industry? Either you trust them with this decision or you don’t.
At the end of the day, my husband was in the room at my invitation, not because I don’t love him but because my medical visits are mine and are protected by privacy laws. (I certainly don’t sit in on his!) Seems like men are conveniently forgotten or remembered depending on their usefulness as a scapegoat or an excuse by abortion advocates. (It’s my body, my choice! Oh no, wait, that law is sexist! Make him watch, too!)
Thank you Chris!!!
Additionally, since when does having more information about your own medical condition prove detrimental to your decision-making process?
That’s the first thing I thought of when I read this…what “experts” ???
Must be nice to live in a fantasy world where you just make things up out of your own imagination and call it “journalism”!
Right, MPC…I also had an ultrasound years ago to diagnose an ovarian cyst.
I had my first U/S with my daughter at 7 weeks. Of COURSE doctors do an ultrasound for the reasons everyone has stated.
I think this guy needs an ultrasound to determine if he has a BRAIN! ;)
BTW….sweet ultrasound picture! :D
all spot on!
@Pamela “That’s the first thing I thought of when I read this…what “experts””
The weekly contributors to the new england journal of crap we made up.
ploy to assault the mother with feelings
Not to mention the ploy to assault the child with deadly weapons.
This guy seems to think men have a lot more of a say in the abortion thing than they actually do.
He sounds like he’s pressured someone to have an abortion before.
@$$h0l3.
This headline could easily be switched to say: “Informed consent before abortion is ‘sexist’ because the ‘father of the fetus’ doesn’t GET to do it.”
Forced Information is here!
Schools have been around a long time, Denise.
Galuska is lacking sound arguments.
What??!! A pro-abort lacks a sound argument??!! What is the world coming to??!! Apparently the Mayans were right – the world must truly be about to end!
Tearing apart one’s child= modern and empowering. Looking at an image of the child= medieval. Oh “pro-choice” logic.
A lot of you have already nailed the core issue behind Ultrasound laws. Informed women = knowledge of what the “lump of tissue” really is = fewer women choosing to kill said lump of tissue = lower profits for abortionists.
What I don’t get is all the average people (ie NOT those doing the abortions) who aggresively advocate for abortion to stay legal and available. I mean, what’s in it for them? They’re not getting paid, and a lot of times they’ll admit they’ve never had an abortion or would personally never have one. So what gives? Why argue so fiercely for something you wouldn’t do?
Actually if you look at the simple logic of his statements – the “fetus” has a father and a mother?
Umm – doesn’t that make the fetus a “child” – specifically their child?
Oblivious to the obvious.
And maybe ultrasound before abortion is ’emotionally torturous’ for a reason? Too much to expect some kind of emotional reaction at destroying the entire lifetime of another? It just slays me how it always come back to ‘me me how will it make ME feel’ umm yeah I’d say it’s a wee bit easier than being dismembered, but it’s only the effect on WOMEN that matters, then just label it ‘equal’ rights. Don’t they ‘trust women’ enough to know the basics of fetal development?
This guy seems to think men have a lot more of a say in the abortion thing than they actually do.
I have a co-worker — a very nice guy, kind of an old hippie type — and he told me that one of the reasons his ex-wife (well, one of his ex-wives) and him got a divorce is that she had an abortion and didn’t even tell him about it until after the fact. She wanted to complete her education You can go to school and be pregnant, but that’s another story (as it turned out, she didn’t even finish her degree).
Anyway, he said that he was “personally opposed” to abortion, but thought that women should still have the “right to choose,” yet he was so upset about his ex-wife having an abortion that he filed for divorce. Wasn’t she just exercising her right to choose? I didn’t say this because it was obviously painful for him to talk about, but that’s a very strange way of thinking.
Adair, you nailed it.
Love the way he says “father of the fetus”. I mean when I was pregnant with our babies, my husband always referred to himself as “father of the the fetus”! Hah!
“Don’t they ‘trust women’ enough to know the basics of fetal development?”
And what part of ”fetal development” is essential information for a woman who has chosen to abort the fetus – other than to guilt trip her into thinking that she shouldn’t have an abortion? Before I had my uterus removed (best operation ever) I had a sonogram to determine the size of the fibroids. I was asked if I wanted to see it. I declined. But in Texas, isn’t the woman required to listen to a script, prepared by the anti-choice legislature, while being forced to view the sonogram – just to make sure she knows what what an evil thing she is for killing her “baby.”
CC, what does an abortion do?
Women deserve full disclosure. Abortion is not the removal of a fibroid but of a living human being with a heartbeat.
I guess you’d prefer women continue to remain in ignorance, thinking the embryo/fetus is nothing more than a “clump of cells.”
I’d prefer that women actually be given accurate information about what is being done in an abortion – and what is being “terminated.”
Women aren’t empowered through ignorance or by someone patronizing them by telling them they don’t need to worry their little heads about what an abortion actually does. Women are empowered when they are equipped with all relevant information. And the fact that she is killing a living human IS relevant, because THAT is what an abortion does.
If killing a baby is what a woman wants to do to protect her autonomy or because she is poor, then how could she be made to feel guilty? cc you don’t make any rational sense. Either abortion is fabulous or it’s murder. If it’s so fabulous then all the pressure in the world won’t make anyone feel guilty. How could anyone at all be made to feel guilty IF THERE IS NOTHING WRONG?
Do I feel guilty for trimming my toenails? Why not? Why don’t you make me feel guilty, cc??
Why does murdering babies make someone feel guilty, cc, why?????
Far better for the woman to see and make an informed decision about her pregnancy than to find the facts afterwards. Personally, I knew I was ending the life of my 13-week old child at the time of my abortion but when I saw the ultrasounds of my other children, it became real. The abortion pictures were even more compelling because I could see what abortion really does (I had kind of just thought that, whisk, baby gone).
No matter how hard you try, pro(abortion)-choice advocates, you cannot hide the truth from women. Better to let them know up-front. Show them the ultrasound, go beyond the the requirements of the law – show the abortion pictures. After all, you are medical professionals and have no desire to influence a decision on an elective surgery.
You should have been doing this right from the get-go instead of waiting for these “anti-choice” legislatures to come up with laws you don’t like.
When will you “trust women”?
CC, would you rather a woman find out that it is evil to have an abortion BEFORE or after the procedure. I ask because I have had friends who aborted, not realizing that their babies were completely formed inside of them with hearts beating away. Years later when pregnant with WANTED babies they had ultrasounds. They were devastated and horrified to see their wanted babies completely formed and kicking at the same gestational age their first babies had been when they aborted them. But it was TOO LATE. They wished they had known. They wished they had had all the information. Yet they were denied information, vital information, so that they weren’t made to feel “evil”. And where will you pro-aborts be for these women? Will you be there the rest of their lives protecting them from any information on fetal development so that they never have to feel evil?
Barb: Far better for the woman to see and make an informed decision about her pregnancy than to find the facts afterwards. Personally, I knew I was ending the life of my 13-week old child at the time of my abortion but when I saw the ultrasounds of my other children, it became real.
Barb, that entirely depends on how you are defining “child.” You’re way off from how many (if not most) people do it. If you truly felt you were having an abortion that “involved a child,” and you felt that was wrong, then I’d say abortion was not right for you. And pro-choicers are not not saying you *should* have an abortion, then.
Get back to us when your fibroids are gestating human beings, CC.
“That depends on how you’re defining child” and Hitler didn’t kill human beings, just Jews? That is how it all begins, with a few folks slapping a different label on others and stripping them of their humanity. Sickening.
Interesting that in a 2009 study on the impact of ultrasound on women’s abortion decisions, 0% of the women who elected to see the ultrasound changed their minds about the procedure: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19340704
So when abortion rates don’t change as a result of these compulsory ultrasound viewing laws, are you going to give up the ‘ole “women are dupes” canard and accept your premise that anybody who knows what abortion “does” without being horrified is evil?
my girlfriend kept her ultrasound from her abortion. she was a nurse and aborted from a much younger man back in 99. today she is devestated! the guy told her he would leave if she didnt abort but months later he left her for a younger woman. anyway she even said she felt awful the day the abortion happened. years later the loss is still there as she spilled out tears to me. it has nothing to do with the picture. it has to do with the abortion and the fact that her child was murdered that day!
Yeah, one study is representative of every woman who’s ever aborted. If ultrasound is so ineffective, proaborts wouldn’t continue shrieking about it.
Well MPCQ, I only posted the one because, to my knowledge, there AREN’T ANY OTHER studies published in peer-reviewed journals about the impact of viewing an ultrasound on a woman’s abortion decision. Pro-lifers love throwing around bogus statistics cited in a footnote to an endnote in Randall Terry’s CPC’s executive summary, . How many times here have I heard, “80% of women who view the ultrasound won’t get an abortion!!!1”?
Sorry, nope. Not only is your lot trying violate women while they’re in a vulnerable position–i.e., with a probe inside their vaginas–this approach hasn’t even been evaluated for effectiveness. These laws really epitomize wastefulness in healthcare spending.
And of course women aren’t at all vulnerable when a sharp curette is jammed into the cervix which has been forced open with rods. Again, if it’s not a life, then why are women vulnerable at all? Nothing to look at there. Right? Your continued whining says otherwise. Women are too weak to deal in actual facts, and should be shielded from the reality of their choices. That’s true empowerment.
I’ve seen the effectiveness of ultrasound firsthand in sidewalk counseling-I have a handheld ultrasound. But don’t let that deter you, prochoice-propaganda speaks louder than personal experience.
Barb, that entirely depends on how you are defining “child.”
HUMAN OFFSPRING. ARE WE REALLY DOING THIS AGAIN?!? When humans reproduce, they reproduce after their own species. Homo sapiens. An embryo is the biological offspring of his/her parents, whether or not he or she has “sprung off” yet, so let’s NOT go there, mmkay?
Sorry to “yell,” but I’m pretty sick of this same B.S. It’s like listening to Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal.
You think Barb doesn’t know abortion wasn’t “right” for her? Grow some compassion and convictions, Doug. And whoever is “liking” your unfeeling, disgusting posts needs to grow some, as well.
“And of course women aren’t at all vulnerable when a sharp curette is jammed into the cervix which has been forced open with rods.”
Any medical procedure, when described in graphic terms, could seem appalling. Do C-sections make you squeamish, too? Also, having for a surgical procedure doesn’t mean I’ve consented to being propagandized by some interest group while I’m on the examining room table, while I’ve got a probe inside my vagina. If you want women to be able to view the ultrasound, then create a law that requires providers to ask their patients if they’d like to see the screen. All of this mandatory ultrasound viewing and script reading bespeaks your belief that women are not to be trusted to make their own health decisions.
And your personal anecdotes are cute and all, but even a plethora of anecdotes doesn’t make a statistic. Until you can prove that viewing an ultrasound is effective–at the population level–at changing women’s minds about abortion, then these mandatory ultrasound viewing laws will be nothing other than a waste of time and–yes–taxpayer money.
Megan, don’t you think you ought to have a visual of someone before you kill her?
LOL!!!! “Any medical procedure, when described in graphic terms, could seem appalling” and straight on to “Not only is your lot trying violate women while they’re in a vulnerable position–i.e., with a probe inside their vaginas” pot, meet kettle. Comedy gold.
Until you can prove ultrasound isn’t an effective deterrent, I’ll continue laughing at your cute little proabort anecdotes that aren’t facts.
So, let’s review: mandatory ultrasounds are unfair, but forcing taxpayers to fund abortions against their will is totally fair. Riiiiiight. No hypocrisy there at all. Battle on, folks, I’m off to bed, was up all night attending a birth-another clump of cells that slipped through the prochoice net.
accept your premise that anybody who knows what abortion “does” without being horrified is evil?
Yeah. I accepted that after about a month on Twitter. It’s not difficult to see, especially with people like you running around.
Late to the party here, but I’ve had six pregnancies and a first-trimester ultrasound with each one. Over the course of my pregnancies, I’ve seen three different care providers at three different hospitals in two different states.
I see it as a part of informed consent. After all, if what pro-aborts say is true and the embryo/fetus is just a clump of cells that is not discernibly human, so on and so forth, it won’t change a woman’s mind in the slightest, right?
Um, my understanding is the abortion clinics are already doing ultrasounds to help the abortionists know what they are aborting, but they are not offering to let the patients see the ultrasounds or even refusing to show them. If abortion clinics were so concerned with choice, they would print each woman a copy of her ultrasound picture and send her home to think about it and make sure that’s what she really wanted to do. But abortionists have more in common with used-car salesmen (sorry, I know there are some good used-car salesmen) than with medical practitioners.