Today, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell signed HB 462, the ultrasound bill, into law. The bill becomes law after a long, hard fight where the abortion industry fought against a life-saving procedure that is often used in Planned Parenthood clinics – even as they argued it was an assault on women.
Abortion advocates pulled out all the stops to kill the bill. They used lies and misinformation, vile personal attacks on legislators, and even got the media to assist. Reports repeating the mischaracterizations that the bill forced women to undergo a “trans-vaginal” ultrasound showed up on ABC News, MSNBC, and the Washington Post as well as on entertainment programs like The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live. Legislators who opposed the bill even said it amounted to “state-sanctioned rape.”
Virginia legislators amended the bill to explicitly clarify that invasive ultrasounds were not required, only exterior “trans-abdominal” ultrasounds were. There’s good medical reasons to require ultrasounds prior to abortion. Ultrasound are used to determine the gestational age of the unborn child because the farther along in pregnancy a woman is, the greater the risk that abortion poses. Ultrasounds are also used to diagnose ectopic pregnancies which can result in fallopian rupture and life-threatening bleeding.
However, the change didn’t mollify abortion advocates. They instead switched their rhetoric from “state-sanctioned rape” to calling an ultrasound “tantamount to battery” because it requires “unwanted touching.”
As Planned Parenthood already requires ultrasounds before you can get an abortion at one of their clinics, the only reason for abortion advocates to oppose HB 462 is because of the requirement that women actually have to be offered the opportunity to see the image of their unborn child.
That fear that women will choose life after receiving this information means abortion advocates would rather defend those abortion providers who don’t provide such life-saving tests rather than risk that women will not choose abortion. Abortion advocates’ true colors show through yet again.