Ultrasounds "Unneeded" Before An Early Abortion
by Robin Marty, RH Reality Check
December 9, 2010 - 11:07am (Print)
Forcing mandatory ultrasounds on women prior to allowing them to obtain an abortion is a new favorite tactic of the anti-choice state legislators and activists. For the activists, it's a roadblock to slow the women down or hope that they will change their minds. For the women, it's another attempt to be told that their own choices are invalid and they need to second guess themselves. Either way, it is a delay tactic and a financial punishment rolled into one.
And now, according to a new study, it's utterly unnecessary in most first trimester abortions.
Via Reuters:
The study, published in the obstetrics journal BJOG, included 4,484 women seeking the abortion pill at any of 10 U.S. family planning clinics, including eight Planned Parenthood clinics.
Providers at the study sites -- most often nurse-midwives, nurse practitioners or physician assistants -- asked the women to give, or estimate, the date of their last menstrual period and performed physical exams. The women then underwent ultrasound.
Overall, only 1.6 percent of the women would have been given the abortion pill beyond the standard nine weeks if their providers had relied on their estimates and a physical exam alone.
And even in those cases, all of the women except for one were within the 11th week of their last menstrual period -- a point at which, studies show, the effectiveness of medical abortion is still high, without an increased risk of complications.
Overall, medical abortion is effective 97 percent of the time, with failed attempts followed up with a surgical abortion. After the ninth week of pregnancy, that effectiveness may begin to wane, "but it is not a steep drop-off," Bracken said in an interview. "Any reduction in efficacy would be gradual."
The findings, she said, indicate that doctors and other providers who lack ultrasound equipment can still "feel safe" in offering medical abortion. And that could help broaden access to medical abortion in rural parts of the U.S., as well as developing countries where ultrasound would be largely unavailable.
Sadly, despite the study's results, we can expect even more states to continue to enact legislation demanding that women have an ultrasound before the procedure. Because it was never about a woman's health, but only about obstructing her right to choose.
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It's particularly offensive to obstruct her right to choose on the presumption that she's probably lying to her medical provider, or else too stupid to be able to count on her fingers.
You've got to wonder about the massive contempt these people feel for humans. Anybody see the taxpayer funded abstinence message "Girls shouldn't have ideas"?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmwJvgKTTjw
There's just something intensely contemptuous about 'boys don't like it when they feel dumb, and since we all know that boys ARE not only dumb but willfully, stubbornly stupid as stumps, a girl who wants boys to like her needs to pretend she's had a lobotomy'.
OMG, those videos are so disturbing! (but I guess that's the point!)
That was the 4th one of those animations I've watched. AmericaBlog (my other daily read) featured one where those characters were talking about quantative easing otherwise known as 'printing money'.
It's wonderful what smart folks can do with a Mac
Aren't you thrilled $1.5 BILLION tax dollars has gone to efforts to teach girls to act stupid so boys will like them?
Aren't you thrilled $1.5 BILLION tax dollars has gone to efforts to teach girls to act stupid so boys will like them?
it works for Sarah Palin and will continue to for a few more years..
On the ultrasound question, we seem to like to forget that women had babies befor ultrasound was in use. Once a hopital or doctor has a machine it is a great revenue stream. The policy seems to me to be designed to generate guilt and shame upon any mother considering terminating her pregnancy. This is a religion based program which is also welcomed by manufacturers and operators of ultrasound machines, for it's income potential. These days citizens are seemingly considered to be comodities.
Exactly aligatorhardt! I don't think some politicians even hide the fact that they're trying to price abortion out of reach for the majority of American women by taking on several hundred dollars to an already pricey procedure. :(
We also seem to forget that new medical technology may have unknown effects. When my mother was a kid, her mom checked to see if her shoes fit correctly by having her stand in the 'fluoroscope' at the shoe store. Everybody just assumed that x-rays were problem free.
It's been pretty conclusively demonstrated that the once popular (and lucrative) practice of obstetricians x-raying their pregnant patients led to a huge increase in childhood leukemia, and most parents aren't aware today that giving permission for their child to have x-rays or CT scans increases that child's leukemia risk.
http://www.medicexchange.com/Radiology/x-rays-linked-to-increased-childhood-leukemia-risk.html
While one or two ultrasounds during a pregnancy may be essential to diagnose fetal malformations or reveal problems of pregnancy that may complicate delivery, the assumption that they're completely safe is just stupid. So far as I know, nobody is doing any long-term followup studies to see if that's true. Certainly having the government MANDATE medically unnecessary ultrasounds in an price girls/women out of abortion or prevent them from 'sinning' can't possibly be defended before a court.
