As a society, we are drawn to visual aids, photographs, and movies. The right picture can capture the attention and acclaim of millions. Truth, or fabrication, can be established with the flick of a finger on a camera button. There is something about them that stimulates the human mind. They can change our emotions at a single glance.
For decades, Time magazine has been publishing the most compelling pictures of the year found from all over the world. These pictures move and motivate people to action, to change, and to new thought processes.
If a picture featuring someone or something a half a planet away from us can trigger a powerful response, what about the filming of a woman’s own child, live in the mysterious world of her own womb? While ultrasounds have become so commonplace that their pictures won’t grace a Time photography list, they may be just commonplace enough to have the power to save the lives of babies targeted for abortion.
The concept is simple: Abortion is a life and death decision. Mothers and their babies deserve the benefit of full-informed consent before such a decision is made. Mandatory ultrasounds fill the void.
What happens to the psyche of a woman who sees her tiny child on the screen or print of an ultrasound? Though it is but miniature and still in the embryonic or fetal development stage, something about that experience can be literally life-changing and lifesaving.
Save the Storks is a national pro-life group that utilizes medically equipped buses and vans overseen by licensed medical providers to offer free mobile ultrasounds to abortion-minded and abortion-vulnerable women. They have performed thousands of free ultrasounds.
Their approach is very straightforward. Perform a standard ultrasound. Factually explain what the mother is seeing and hearing. Inform her about resources available to her should she choose to not go through with the abortion. And here is the amazing statistic: even when encountering women who were dead-set on aborting when they walked out the abortion clinic, four out of five women who board a Stork Bus, see their baby on the ultrasound and hear the heartbeat, choose life.
Imagine losing 80%, or even just 50%, of your business because your customers decide that given a vital piece of information you were withholding, they no longer want to support your business strategy? That’s why abortion providers and supporters fear an ultrasound bill. They know that ultrasounds are bad for business. They’re bad for pro-choice talking-points. Ultrasounds are far more likely to convince mothers to choose life rather than abortion. They have an uncanny way of motivating abortion-minded mothers to action, to change, and to new thought-processes.
And that’s the crux of the matter. They don’t want women to change their minds. They don’t want women to acknowledge, let alone see and hear the vibrant humanity of their unborn child. They want them to stick to the one choice that forwards their pro-abortion narrative.
They won’t come out and say that’s why they oppose an ultrasound bill. They will scream government interference, reproductive oppression and punishing women. Yet, if statistics show that ultrasounds impact the number of women choosing abortion, what are people in the industry willing to do and say and hide from their customers to ensure they stay in business?
There’s an agenda in not giving abortion-vulnerable women an ultrasound when they are making one of the most important decisions of their lives — a life or death decision. We might call this a conflict of interest.
If we really care about giving women choices about their pregnant bodies, we better be giving them all the pertinent information necessary for them to make a truly informed and personal ethical decision. Human lives are depending on it.
Kristy Nielsen
Kristy Nielsen, Taylorsville, is a wife and mother to four kids and pro-life advocate.