Since the Supreme Court guaranteed American women the right to choose abortion in the landmark ruling Roe v. Wade in 1973, anti-abortion politicians, organizations and community leaders have furiously campaigned to overturn the decision. The most recent attempt, submitted in a proposal at the Capitol early this week, was made by state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, and Rep. Frank Corte, R-San Antonio. The state congressmen have sponsored a bill that would mandate a new type of informed consent for women seeking abortions. If the bill passes, doctors will be required to perform ultrasounds on all women seeking abortions. On top of the mandatory ultrasound, doctors will also be forced to provide women with images of the fetus, a description of its dimensions and the sound of its heartbeat.
Informed consent is a legal condition by which individuals can be said to have given consent based on a strong appreciation and understanding of the facts, implications and possible future consequences of their actions. Currently, most informed-consent laws require that patients be given factual information by the abortion provider about a day in advance of the procedure. Doctors inform a woman about her legal rights, alternatives to abortion (i.e., adoption), available public and private assistance and medical facts before the abortion is performed. As of yet, no law requires a woman to be subjected to images with the intent of making the procedure increasingly emotional.
The proposed bill is both discriminatory and insulting to women. Not only does the bill play off the stereotype that women are ultrasensitive beings who will immediately back out of their decision to terminate a pregnancy when presented with the live traits of a fetus, but it also blatantly disregards any extenuating circumstances surrounding a patient’s pregnancy to further anti-abortion policies. In this case, instead of fulfilling their primary, purely medical function, ultrasounds work as a political tool for laying guilt on women.
According to LifeCare, a pregnancy help center that counsels women on alternatives to abortion, after seeing images provided by ultrasounds, 80 percent of the women chose not to have an abortion.
What anti-abortion politicians and organizations like LifeCare choose to glaze over is a woman’s living situation outside the clinic — how she became pregnant, if she has a job, whether she is married or in a stable relationship or whether she can afford to support a child. Each of these issues factors into a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy — a decision that should be made without the damnation or political influence of others.
In a research study released in 2007, the nonprofit group Child Trends reported that Texas had the fifth-highest teen-pregnancy rate and the highest teen birth rate in the U.S. With 62 births per 1,000 female teenagers ages 15 to 19 it is clear that the state of Texas is putting more effort into condemning abortions than trying to prevent them with proper sex education programs in our schools.
All interested parties can agree that prevention must go hand in hand with education. Not only must we inform pregnant women of all ages about their rights to choice and privacy, we must also respect the decisions they make without forcing them to undergo unnecessary emotional trauma.
