According to a recent Civitas poll, 56% of North Carolina voters support the “Abortion – Women’s Right to Know Act.” This proposed piece of legislation requires doctors to provide women seeking abortions with an ultrasound, information on alternatives to abortion, and 24-hour waiting period before the abortion is performed.
Not only does this proposed act increase the seriousness of a decision to have an abortion by creating more closely guarded rules for the procedure, it will also work to provide women with a clear understanding of their options and the opportunity to reconsider once presented with alternatives.
If passed, this act will be a terrific step towards increasing awareness of a host of organizations that offer counseling and assistance in choosing alternatives to abortion, and it could lessen the probability of post-abortion regret.
House Bill 854, “Abortion – Women’s Right to Know Act,” is currently in the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services.
Those who oppose this modest reform are not pro-choice, they are pro-abortion.
This bill simply ensures that the buyer of an abortion is given full disclosure of all the relevant information needed to make an informed choice, and at least 24 hours to read and evaluate most of it. But (according the the NCGA’s Fiscal Research Division) giving women that information is expected to reduce the number of abortions in NC by about eight per day.
That’s why the abortion industry is lobbying furiously to stop this bill: because it will cut into their gruesome business.
Most women who get abortions do not really want them. They just want a problem solved. Often they feel cornered, and think they have no other realistic choice. Sometimes they are pressured into it. Sometimes they don’t understand the medical implications. Sometimes they don’t know their legal rights, or don’t know about the resources that are available to help them and their babies.
As Dr. David Reardon memorably said, “a woman ‘wants’ an abortion like an animal, caught by its foot in a steel trap, wants to gnaw its leg off.”
This bill will help many women escape the trap without sacrificing their babies’ lives.
Often the horror and guilt from her abortion haunts a woman for the rest of her life. I’ve met many women who desperately regret their abortions. I’ve never met a woman who considered abortion, but chose life for her child, and later regretted it.
Every abortion is a tragedy, but, arguably, the most tragic of all is an abortion which is desperately regretted for the rest of the mother’s life. This bill will reduce the number of those tragedies. How could anyone with a heart oppose that?
The information and waiting period seem fine, but I can’t see any justification for the ultrasound. Plus it would have significant costs.
Ben, in the vast majority of cases, the abortionist does an ultrasound/sonogram already. (However, current typical practice for abortionists is to turn the screen so that the mother can’t see her baby.) Also, there are many crisis pregnancy centers (“CPCs”) run by Christians in varios NC cities which offer free ultrasounds to pregnant women. So, in most cases, the ultrasound requirement won’t add to the cost.
The problem is that most women don’t know what their baby looks like at whatever his gestational age is. She might not know that babies as young as 10 or 11 weeks G.A. are very active, kicking, stretching, touching their faces, swimming around, and may even be seen sucking their thumbs.
If she goes ahead and has an abortion, and then years later sees an ultrasound of a baby sucking his thumb or toe at the same age her baby was when she had the abortion, the truth of what she has really done strikes home, and it is utterly devastating. She needs to know these things BEFORE her baby is dead!
What, you say that you didn’t know that babies at 10-11 weeks G.A. do those things? Here are some ultrasound photos:
http://www.abortiontv.com/Growth/BabysLifeBeforeBirth.htm
Don’t feel bad. Lot’s of people don’t know things like that. They sure won’t learn them from Planned Parenthood, either, if we don’t enact this law!
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