Category: Ultrasound Quotes

A woman was on her way into an abortion clinic when a pro-lifer from Save the Storks reached out to her and asked if she wanted to see an ultrasound of her baby.

The woman recounts what happened next:

I entered the bus with mixed emotions. I knew what I wanted, but I also knew what I had to do. I wanted to be a mom, but knew that I had to wait.

The nurse asked me several questions about my health history and I ended up telling her all about my previous abortion and the terrible effects it had had on me. I told her that deep down I felt that this pregnancy was my “second chance”—my second chance to make the right decision and my second chance to be a mom.

She asked if I wanted to have an ultrasound done so that I could see my baby. I eagerly said “yes” and sat down on the leather table. I leaned back and the nurse moved the ultrasound probe around my stomach. The nurse showed me my baby’s heartbeat—I couldn’t believe it! That was all I needed to decide that I was going to keep my baby.

The nurse and counselor prayed with me and assured me that I would not be alone on my journey through motherhood. They told me about local pregnancy centers where I could receive resources that would help me find housing, food, and supplies for my child while my boyfriend and I continued to look for jobs.

Save the Storks “Woman Rejects Abortion After Seeing Her Baby’s Heart Beat on an Ultrasound” LifeNews JAN 20, 2017

A pro-life book revealed the following statistics:

“In one report from a crisis pregnancy center in Ohio – with no ultrasound administered – just 20% of abortion minded clients continued with their pregnancies. But when an ultrasound was administered, 95% of the women continued on with their pregnancies.”

Wendy Williams, Ann Caldwell Empty Arms: More Than 60 Life-Giving Stories of Hope from the Devastation of Abortion (Chattanooga, Tennessee: Living Ink Books, 2005) XI

A pro-choice feminist reacts to her ultrasound:

“I lay on the cool slab of padded stretcher watching as she [the ultrasound technician] moves the instrument across me. ..

She becomes the eyes that this technology takes from me. Yet I am the one who is asked to fashion the gaze that she produces- to turn and twist and interpret until I have called the fetus in from its shadows, from its blurry frozen lines and taken it, like the picture book snapshot I hold in my  hand, and made it real….

Each time the face of the baby retreats, I long for its return as I so much want to participate in the this drama of creation. Here, in the ultrasound room, is where this “life” is created.

Here is where I know there is no turning back. Here is where the howling ghostly possibility becomes real. Here is where the dewing begins, the aural images of feet, head, heart, spine, bone are all taken and pieced together and handed back to me like the fuzzy snapshots I clutch so carefully.

Here is where the notion of wholeness becomes reified through a collection of the pieces of the phantom fetal body. No longer just part of the mother, a dreamlike possibility hovering somewhere in still fluids. “

Karen L. Carr “Optical Allusions: Hysterical Memories and the Screening of Pregnant Sites” Postmodern Culture V. 5 n . 2 January 1995

“It was not until the last half of this century that the prying eye of the ultrasound (that is, ultrasound  visualization) rendered the once opaque womb transparent, stripping the veil of mystery from the dark inner sanctum, and letting the light of scientific observation fall on the shy and secretive fetus…

The sonographic voyeur, spying on the unwary fetus finds him or her a surprisingly active little creature, not at all the passive parasite we had imagined.”

Physician Michael R. Harrison

Valerie Hartouni “Containing Women: Reproductive Discourse in the 1980s” Techonocluture, Constance Penley and Andrew Ross, eds. (Minneapolis: U of Minneapolis Press, 1991) 38

An abortion clinic escort talks about how one of the women at the abortion clinic changed her mind after seeing an ultrasound of her baby. She says:

Lots of women aren’t sure about the decision when they go in to a clinic, and they ask to see the ultrasound, and they decide not to abort. That’s fine – it’s a choice. But when a woman comes in who is 100% sure of the decision, and has no interest whatsoever in looking at the ultrasound, why should she have to?… (here’s a news flash) when women are pregnant, they KNOW what’s in there! They don’t think it’s a fish, or a stapler. We don’t need an ultrasound to tell us.

I think people who ask to see the ultrasound should be allowed to, of course. For some women it’s the information they need to show themselves that they can’t go through with it. For others, it’s a piece of the grieving process.

“Surprise! No Staplers on THIS Ultrasound” Anti–choice Is Anti-Awesome April 29, 2008