Karla Dial wrote an article in Citizen Magazine about how ultrasounds of unborn babies affect parents, including those parents who are considering abortions.
According to Robert Wolfson, M.D., Ph.D., the Colorado Springs, Colo., perinatologist:
“It [ultrasound] creates a commitment to the pregnancy and the individual on board from both parents,” Wolfson told Citizen. “The mother can feel the baby, but the father needs a photograph to form a relationship with that child. Imagine putting that picture on your desk and looking at it every day.
“It’s all about the fact that you can fall in love with your child before birth. People know intuitively that there is power in that.”
Also from the article:
“This is a ‘Wow’ kind of machine,” agreed Medical Director Dr. Bill Cutrer. “The kinds of images we can get on the real early pregnancies at seven weeks, eight weeks, nine or 10, are just breathtaking. There’s no one that leaves with any doubt this is a baby.” ….
“They don’t want them to go to Planned Parenthood, where they’ll get their full range of options,” Alison Herwitt, NARAL Pro-Choice America’s director of government relations, told Newhouse News Service of the bill’s sponsors. “They just want them to go to crisis pregnancy centers, where women will be exposed to this weapon at taxpayers’ expense.”
Is an ultrasound machine a weapon? Planned Parenthood routinely turns the ultrasound screen away from women and discourages or outright forbids them from looking at it when they come in for abortions. The organization fights laws that say a woman must be offered a chance to view it– they oppose allowing a woman to see an ultrasound even when it is her choice to do so. Is informing a woman about what’s going on in her body wrong? Or is it better to keep women in the dark? What about an ultrasound, which merely reveals the baby that is already there, makes it a weapon?
A woman who was considering abortion after a pregnancy resulting from rape agreed to a free ultrasound at a pregnancy center:
““She was blinking. She was just hanging out, looking around, sucking on her thumb,” Oliver told Citizen. “It was so realistic, so lifelike. It looks like you can just reach right in there and pick up the baby.
“I know they have a heartbeat at 4 to 6 weeks, but it still doesn’t feel as real to you until you see a human. It amazed me.”
She kept her baby.
“I never thought I could love or bond with a child [who] was conceived under such horrible circumstances, but that’s where we don’t give God enough credit,” Oliver said. “I look at her, and I don’t even see him. She’s beautiful and perfect.”
Karla Dial “Bringing Good Things to Life”Citizen June 2003
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