Ultrasound vs. abortion

At a recent banquet for the Bakersfield Pregnancy Center in California, nurse Carolyn Schaefer triumphantly declared that the clinic had saved eight unborn lives.

Five months ago, Miss Schaefer told the audience, the California center bought a $25,000 ultrasound machine. Of the 41 clients scanned since the purchase, 15 were “abortion-minded,” she says. Of those 15, “eight changed their minds to parent after they viewed the ultrasound image of their baby.”

The experience in Bakersfield highlights the latest trend for Christian-based pregnancy centers — the use of ultrasound machines as tools to discourage abortions.

“When women see the baby, the denial ends. It’s as simple as that,” said Thomas A. Glessner, founder and president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), which represents more than 750 centers nationwide.

Pregnancy-center directors say they use ultrasound machines to date pregnancies and ensure the placenta is intact, as well as to give women “all the facts.”

“We always heard from girls, ‘Oh, it’s just a blob of tissue,’” says Terri Maikkula, director of five Colorado pregnancy centers that use ultrasound machines. “We want women to make their decisions based on facts.”

Pro-choice groups deny that the machines and those operating them are simply engaged in truth-telling.

“I think that it would be wonderful if they were giving women all the facts,” says David Seldin, of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “But our evidence is that these centers offer ideologically influenced, biased counseling to women who they lure in by misrepresenting themselves as something they aren’t.”

Mr. Seldin and others have criticized Christian-based pregnancy centers for what they say are misleading tactics. Some centers have advertised free pregnancy tests, and included their phone book listings under abortion services without making mention of their pro-life mission.

In a precedent-setting case, Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside counties in 1992 sued five Southern California pregnancy centers claiming bad business practices and deceptive advertising. Planned Parenthood won, with the judge ruling that the phrase “offering alternatives to abortion” must be prominent in all advertising, phone book listings and signs.

The lawsuit’s outcome prompted Christian-based centers to obtain permission from the state to legally perform medical procedures such as pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, Mr. Glessner says.

NIFLA “took the lead,” he said, and produced a manual on how pro-life pregnancy centers could obtain the proper licenses.

Medically licensed centers began to purchase ultrasound machines, and center officials began to notice that ultrasound technology had effects beyond simply dating pregnancies — women deciding to remain pregnant in higher numbers, Mr. Glessner says.

America’s abortion rate steadily decreased during the 1990s, from 1.6 million abortions performed in 1991 to 1.3 million in 2000, according to Census Bureau statistics. Mr. Glessner predicts the abortion rate will plummet to about 500,000 by 2010 if ultrasound machines are widely used.

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