Anti-Abortion Groups Perform Live Ultrasounds On Capitol Hill

A coalition of anti-abortion groups performed a string of live ultrasounds on stage in the Congressional Auditorium Thursday morning to kick off its national "Voices From the Womb" tour, which uses sonograms as a political tool to convert people into opposing abortion.

The campaign invited all 535 members of Congress to witness pregnant women stepping up on stage, one after another, to have their live ultrasounds projected onto a giant screen and described for the audience. Only four lawmakers showed up, since the event happened to coincide with House floor debates on a major anti-abortion bill.

Republican Presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) sent her legislative assistant Renee Doyle to the event to promote the mandatory ultrasound bill Bachmann introduced last week, which would force women in the early stages of pregnancy to have a physically invasive ultrasound procedure and listen to the fetal heartbeat before they can legally consent to having an abortion.

"The beauty of this bill is that the [ultrasound] image will speak for itself, and once a mother sees the image there's an immediate connection," Doyle told the audience. "And anecdotally and statistically, you can see that a mother will choose life, and when a mother chooses life, she also, her heart changes too, and when her heart changes she becomes a proponent of life."

Some doctors who perform abortions argue that the bill is based on a false premise. Women already have the opportunity to see an ultrasound image of the fetus or listen to the heartbeat if they choose to do so, and most of them walk into the clinic knowing what an abortion means and having made up their minds about whether to have one.

"Women are completely aware that their embryos can develop into babies," Dr. Nancy Stanwood, an obstetrician and board member of the health advocacy group Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, told HuffPost. "They know what it takes to be a good mother and they know when they're ready. Showing a woman the heartbeat doesn't change the situation that caused her to choose abortion in the first place."

Anti-abortion groups are now banding together to push mandatory ultrasound bills similar to Bachmann's in all 50 states, Ohio Right to Life announced on Wednesday. The Voices From the Womb tour will simultaneously be visiting schools, churches, state capitols and public events across the country to perform live ultrasounds for anyone who will watch and listen.

"We invite the pro-choice community to come out of their caves, stop believing that the world is flat and embrace modern medicine and science," said Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, in a statement. "Let us work together for a world in which human rights are given to all."

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that only one lawmaker showed up to the event, when there were actually three who showed up after him. Congressmen Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), Louie Gohmert (R-Tx.), Tom Marino (R-Pa.) and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) spoke at the event.

Comments

[mamahenof3]

07:07 PM on 10/20/2011

"And anecdotally and statistically, you can see that a mother will choose life, and when a mother chooses life, she also, her heart changes too, and when her heart changes she becomes a proponent of life."

Would love to see the statistics that a woman's heart changes and she becomes a proponent of life. That must be the anecdotes. I will never get an abortion. And I will never never never vote to take the option away from a woman. Just because you are pro-choice does not mean you are pro-abortion.

Also, how does the pro-life community support the idea that any one person is completely responsible to use their physical being to support the life of another? The most basic of human rights is the control over our own body.

[Madim]

09:06 AM on 10/18/2011

We should give our own hearts people's rights. I mean, my heart also has a heartbeat, and it also cannot live outside my body. So NO HEART SURGERIES or transplants!.I'd love to see a coalition that's anti-heart surgery. I'm sure we can do the same with other organs of the body. They are technically "alive".
Someone should do something about these hysterical, out of control people, who think they can dictate what a woman can or cannot do with her own body. Like arrest them for indecent exposure of inner bodyparts.

[Kerry Cook]

05:50 PM on 10/16/2011

OK, here's where I need to hold the bus: in the 3rd paragraph, Laura Bassett wrote: "...which would force women in the early stages of pregnancy to have a physically invasive ultrasound procedure..." Um, Laura, have you ever had a pre-natal ultrasound? Unless the woman is obese or their is something wrong suspected with the baby, the only thing "invasive" would be the gel being too cold. I suspect you were trying to make it seem that Bachmann wants pregnant women seeking abortions to be "invasively raped" with the transvaginal transducer in a room filled with leering men playing pocketpool. Sorry Charlie, er Laura, as I'd mentioned previously, the only time the transvaginal transducer is used is in "trying" circumstances. As for the ultrasound picture, it can only help with making the abortion procedure safer for both patient & doctor. As a woman with an opinion, I feel that abortions should not be glazed over with candy coating & happy faces. If a woman finds herself in need of this operation, it should've been done after serious thought & perhaps a little respect to the life that will be ended. We Americans have it too easy & want everything to be painless & guilt free, but we should respect life, in all it's forms, above everything else. If we do not, then we are all expendable & count for nothing. It's a sad state of affairs when people clamor more for animal rights than they do for those of humans.

[Lisa SpomerKrasnoff]

05:45 PM on 10/16/2011

Herman Cain would build a fence that would kill pregnant Mexican woman if he could...

The Republican Party is NOT pro life, just pro-reducing woman to second-class citizens.

[coolhand66]

08:06 PM on 10/15/2011

Republicans do not have a Heartbeat there to mean..

[sharm97]

09:13 PM on 10/15/2011

Republicans don't have a Heartbeat and you don't have a Brain.

[coolhand66]

10:26 PM on 10/15/2011

you are right and the Republican­s do not have a Brain.

[Kerry Cook]

05:36 PM on 10/16/2011

Yet Liberal Dems hear a heart beat & scream! What about THEIR LIVES? THEIR CAREERS? THEIR WIVES (at home with 4 of his darlings)? -rim shot-

[rubysecret]

03:59 PM on 10/15/2011

The pregnant women who step on that stage are in later term pregnancy than most abo.rtio.ns are performed. The real ultrasound that is being required in early term procedures uses an invasive probe, making these forced procedures tantamount to se.xual assault.

[asiclilpup]

06:37 PM on 10/14/2011

Why weren't the male congressmen subjected to an ultra-sound? I know sto__opid but it falls under the same category as what this group did.

[Leslie PalmaSimoncek]

02:42 PM on 10/14/2011

If Steve Jobs' biological mother hadn't chosen life for him, we might not be having this delightful electronic chat.

You just never know who you're aborting.

[synergie]

09:43 PM on 10/14/2011

If only Hitler's had, we might be having a different sort of chat. But, you're quite correct, you never know who you're aborting, or what they might become if they should be born unwanted and unloved and unable to be supported into this world.

[sharm97]

01:34 PM on 10/15/2011

synergie are you speaking for babies that were aborted, maybe you should go and ask the babies whether they would rather be aborted or take the chance on being unloved, unwanted or unable to be supported? Better yet, go and ask all people who are unwanted, unloved and unable to support themselves whether they would rather be put out of their misery and just be killed, since you seem to think you are speaking for those who don't have a chance to speak. And make sure you get back to me.

[Leslie PalmaSimoncek]

02:31 PM on 10/14/2011

This is the quote of the week: "Women are completely aware that their embryos can develop into babies," Dr. Nancy Stanwood, an obstetrician and board member of the health advocacy group Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health.

Can develop into babies? That is obfuscation at its finest.

[synergie]

09:45 PM on 10/14/2011

And the obfuscation would be your attempt to make that statement into something other than the factual one it was?

Your attempt was certainly muddled, but hardly the "finest", do stop patting yourself on the back.

[jimtodd]

12:49 PM on 10/14/2011

There really is no choice in 2012. The insane teavangelicals will destroy this country if they gain power.

[Robert Frano]

12:39 PM on 10/14/2011

"The beauty of this bill is that the [ultrasound] image will speak for itself, and once a mother sees the image there's an immediate connection," Doyle told the audience. "And anecdotally and statistically, you can see that a mother will choose life, and when a mother chooses life, she also, her heart changes too, and when her heart changes she becomes a proponent of life."

Woman who want abortions DON'T change their minds due to unecesscery medical interventions performed to placate those who believe in smaller government, ('No Taxes'), ONLY for themselves...
BTW, who pays for it, if/when I refuse to pay the portion of my, (post abortion), bill adjacent to the words 'ultrasound exam / results'?
I have a vasectomy & WILL NOT be adding to this planet's heroic damage control effort, managing 7.something billion talking monkeys, by methods other than a Darwinian Extinction event.
Like greater-then 99.3% of adolescents, I found/find it quite ingenious/admirable/convenient that my arms are precisely the right length to let my hands discover / perform the 'devil's work', ('Onanism') which, when practiced by others, terrifies a wannabe-se-nator, {R.-DE}, Christine O’Donnell, L.M.A.O.
Republican sycophant Doyle: Am I a mass murderer, ('non-reproductive seed sharing/spilling'), refusing to procreate 'egg & sperm' cafe-lattes, etc.???
Well, just call me a 'Ham Sandwich'!
...as I wait for the summons to your (marsupial-staffed) inqusition-court.

[Gestas]

12:06 PM on 10/14/2011

The Republicans see this as a Jobs Bill...Save the Fetus and lower the Minnium Wage.

[tbot48]

11:43 AM on 10/14/2011

Please get YOUR religous veiws out of MY government!!!

[sharm97]

01:38 PM on 10/15/2011

I will take my religious views out of your government as soon as you take your views out of my government.

[Zantastic]

10:15 AM on 10/14/2011

So they do know that somewhere between 10 - 25% of all pregnancies end in miscarriages, right? And that that's just a natural process of human fertility? That's a lot of "babies" being killed by "God" for no good reason.

[synergie]

09:46 PM on 10/14/2011

It's about 50%. Their god is bloodthirsty.

[Derni]

09:37 AM on 10/14/2011

and I ask..where will these same people be when we have too many people..not enough food and water for the people on earth due to global climate change? weather ? etc> when mandatory abortion is instituted ..where will they be??

[jimtodd]

12:39 PM on 10/14/2011

They'll go for mandatory euthanasia of the old before they give up on killing women.

[synergie]

09:48 PM on 10/14/2011

Why they'll be arguing just as vehemently that it is god's plan that he whispered into their ears about which babies were godly and which were devil's spawn, and that abortion was what god intended for people that they did not want procreating.