Hysterical Abortion Advocates Equate Ultrasounds To Rape

Opinion   |   Cassy Fiano   |   Feb 21, 2012   |   4:46PM   |   Richmond, VA

The Virginia state legislature has introduced a bill requiring women get a sonogram before they get an abortion. It must be given by an MD at least two hours before the procedure — not one of the “nurses” employed by the abortion clinic — and the woman must be given the opportunity to see the ultrasound image and hear the heartbeat.

She is not required to do either, but the option must be made available to her. Pro-abortion advocates immediately flew into attack mode, because heaven forbid anything be done to ensure women get the correct medical information before having an abortion! Hysterics over any attempt to curtail abortions are nothing new, and this time they’ve come up with a rather… interesting argument. Ultrasounds equal rape!

Over at Slate, Dahlia Lithwick writes that most women will be forced into a transvaginal ultrasound, which of course, equals rape.

Because the great majority of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks, that means most women will be forced to have a transvaginal procedure, in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced.

The ultrasound = rape meme is spreading like wildfire around pro-abortion blogs, from RH Reality Check and Feministing, to Feministe and Pandagon. They’re all parroting the same absurd claim: that somehow, requiring a pre-abortion ultrasound equals rape.

Of course, the Virginia state law does not require a transvaginal ultrasound, and transabdominal ultrasounds are commonly performed in the first trimester as well. The state legislature leaves the decision of what kind of ultrasound is performed up to the discretion of the doctor who performs it. Never mentioned is the fact that abortion is entirely voluntary. No woman is going to be forcibly tied down, made to have a transvaginal ultrasound, and then forced into an abortion.

Also never mentioned? That most abortions involve vaginal probing, including vacuum aspiration, which takes place in the first trimester. Apparently the abortion isn’t rape, but the ultrasound is. The abortion advocates are selectively hysterical in their outrage over women being “penetrated”.

The real outrage, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with women supposedly being raped. This is entirely about the simple fact that pro-aborts know that for many women, seeing an ultrasound or hearing the heartbeat will be a game-changer. Abortion is a lucrative business, after all, and anything that threatens that business must be stopped.

And while they will often claim that these laws are not needed because women already are informed enough, the truth of the matter is that our investigations have uncovered that women routinely receive false and inaccurate medical information from abortion clinics. Pre-abortion ultrasounds don’t give abortion clinics the opportunity to lie about medical facts or manipulate women into believing that all they have in their uterus is a blob of unfeeling, meaningless flesh. Hearing a heartbeat, and seeing a baby move and wiggle and kick, can have a huge emotional impact on a woman, which is precisely why pro-abortion advocates are so ardently against it. It has absolutely nothing to do with protecting women, and everything to do with protecting their lucrative, bloody business.

LifeNews Note: Cassy Fiano is a twenty-something Florida native now living in Jacksonville, North Carolina who writes at a number of conservative web sites. She got her start in journalism at the Florida Times-Union. She is currently pregnant with her second son, who was recently diagnosed with Down Syndrome.