If the clinics were active backers of this sort of law, I suppose they could set up whatever preconditions they felt like. But I’m not convinced the doctors are interested in backing this sort of law, and challenging it on the patient’s right to turn down a procedure with no medical benefit seems pretty easy. How many expert witnesses will step up and say under oath that* looking at* ultrasounds offers medical benefits? (Probably more than I’d like, but I doubt they’d be very convincing.)
Then again, looking at the ultrasound isn’t a medical procedure, either. Getting it arguably is, but that does have medical benefits even if the patient goes through with the abortion, as mentioned by DianaG. There are already medical procedures which require you to be exposed to particular information beforehand (the “informed” part of “informed consent”), and I imagine that a court would put this in the same category.
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Sonographers are considered medical professionals, ultrasonography is developed as a diagnostic technique, the procedure takes place in medical setting and is covered by health insurance. Is this really a hair you want to split? Not that it matters, because, as **DianaG **points out, ultrasounds appear to be SOP anyway.
(I guess one could argue that abortion providers should be forced to use their medical equipment ad training for non-medical procedures, against the wishes of their patients, but it doesn’t strike me as a standpoint that’s easier to defend.)
Are you going to force me to look at my carry-on X-ray or something?
Yes. Yes, they do. They truly think that women are so deluded about the nature of their decision that the women involved cannot possibly be trusted to have given the matter any sort of thought at all.
Well, yeah - as far as I can tell, the informed consent in a medical setting pertains to risks and costs involved with the procedure, not so much the moral implications - which, I hope we agree, is the motivation behind these laws. (If a doctor looked at the ultrasound, found evidence of a huge medical risk and refused to share that knowledge with the patient, (s)he would obviously be negligent on that account.)
If it’s really early on (as most abortions are), there wouldn’t be anything to see on the ultra-sound anyway.
I don’t see how this would survive any kind of Constitutional challenge. The state does not have a right to invade a woman’s medical privacy in this way, or impose conditions for a legal procedure.
It 's Sunday think I will go have an abortion. Nothing else to do.
Lets frame this discussion with exactly who gets an abortion.
From the Guttmacher Institute:
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Fifty percent of U.S. women obtaining abortions are younger than 25: Women aged 20–24 obtain 33% of all abortions, and teenagers obtain 17%
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Thirty-seven percent of abortions occur to black women, 34% to non-Hispanic white women, 22% to Hispanic women and 8% to women of other races.
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The abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level ($9,570 for a single woman with no children) is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level (44 vs. 10 abortions per 1,000 women). This is partly because the rate of unintended pregnancies among poor women (below 100% of poverty) is nearly four times that of women above 200% of poverty* (112 vs. 29 per 1,000 women).
Most of those seeking abortions are young, a minority and likely to be living at or below the poverty level. And these bills want to do what? Show them that they are killing their baby selfishly, even as they are struggling to make ends meet in a White, European society that feels it knows what’s best for them? If these bills are to pass, I would want a mandatory* increase in welfare tacked on to make that state’s money available to them to support the children that the state wants them to have.
Or are we ready to admit that we think they deserve what they get, and they should be punished with another mouth to feed for not conforming to a specific set of beliefs? Are we ready to admit that we don’t care about their circumstances, only in enforcing our own beliefs? Are we ready to admit that we’re uninformed about who gets abortions and why?
Vlad/Igor
I had ultrasounds at 6 weeks (I doubt most abortions are done much before then), and you can see the heartbeat, though not much else.
I think that even though, as DianaG points out, abortion clinics usually do ultrasounds, they don’t necessarily show the ultrasound to the patient, and for that matter, I doubt most of the patients have any desire to see it.
Well, having had to suffer the sweet jebus oh my god i have to pee FUCKING NOW torture of a pregnancy ultrasound, if I was told it wasnt a medical reason to have one but a legalistic twaddle one, I would refuse to tank up on teh water. Nothing like peeing yourself because of having to wait to get in, and needing to have a full bladder, then that damned sensor head being shoved against the bladder.
I may have to have one to satisfy those asshats tryign to regulate MY body, but I dont have to comply with the full bladder.
I know exactly what a dead foetus looks like, kthxby. Had 2. Almost died. Aborted a third to keep ME from dying. Sod off.
I totally think we should be able to make working dual-purpose tags this way.[/end hijack]
And I’m really incensed by the controlling motivations behind these bill. It almost (almost) makes me hope that my daughter gets pregnant when she gets into high school, just so I can bring her into Planned Parenthood for an abortion.
:mad:
Well, actually, I don’t really even almost hope for that. But if it were to happen, I’d be driving her to the clinic myself.
Those deaths are consequences of American votes. Don’t you think Americans should have all the information of the real consequences of their votes? Even if you consider the fetus to be a baby are you going to tell me innocent Iraqi lives aren’t as important as American lives?
How is it an invasion of a woman’s privacy for the medical professionals (who have already seen the ultrasound anyway) to show the ultrasound to the woman?
And the state absolutely has a right to impose conditions for a medical procedure-- It’s done all the time. One might well argue that the state does not have the right to impose conditions that make it impossible for the patient to have a procedure, but that’s not the case here: Everyone’s capable of being shown an ultrasound.
Oooh-good idea, I think I’ll take the bus down to Planned Parenthood this Saturday. Hell, I’m not even pregnant-I just need something to occupy my time.
Anyone care to join me? We can go out for coffee afterwards?
It’s an invasion to insert the state into the procedure and make it a requirement.
I’m free. Can we go shoe-shopping, too, and then get our nails done?
Aren’t those conditions meant for the general health of the patient, or (with things like antibiotics) the general health of the population?
How does this enhance either one?
Is the State going to force their eyes to stay open during the procedure? Or are women just going to refuse to look? Then what? Refuse the abortion? Jail? It doesn’t sound like a lot of thought went into this. How do you prove that someone saw an ultrasound?
This whole idea is extraordinarily silly. Not even those who drew up these bills can realistically expect them to pass. They’re just buying another decade’s worth of votes from their whackjob constituency.
You don’t. But you can prove that someone was shown the ultrasound, which is what these bills require.
On this, I agree. Like I said before, even if we grant for the sake of argument that the bills’ purported purpose is legitimate, it would be better served by stock photographs.
I used to volunteer at a PP clinic that provided abortions. Contrary to popular belief, not all PP offer abortions – amusingly, people used to picket the one in the town I lived in – one that did NOT do abortions and never had.
Anyways. They did ultrasounds prior to each procedure. I am unaware of any time where someone backed out based upon the ultrasound. Almost all of the patients, probably greater than 95%, had their minds made up firmly when they entered the building. The rest were what I would consider “quite sure” that this is what they wanted to do – maybe not 100% in favor, but very, very close to it.
I get really tired of people, usually men, who think women blithely decide to have an abortion, like choosing what to wear today or what to have for lunch. I never met a single person for whom this wasn’t something they really thought hard and long about.
Oh, and ultrasounds – the standard ones are for me anyways very hard to see. It looks like one of those old Magic Eye things to me, at any rate “is it a dinosaur? a bat? hmmmm…”.