Gone: 20 Years of Pro-Life Gains!
The Senate has just passed the ironically entitled “Reproductive Health Protection Act” – SB 733 -- introduced by Sen. Jennifer McClellan, which rolls back progress made over the past few decades to protect unborn children and their mothers from the horrors of abortion. Of particular interest to most Virginians is the fact that this bill expands who can perform first trimester abortions to any person licensed by the Board of Medicine and working as a physician’s assistant or any person who is jointly licensed by the Board of Medicine and Nursing and working as a nurse practitioner. While it boggles the mind that the Left won’t acknowledge the fact that these medical professionals are not trained or licensed to perform invasive procedures that can be harmful to women because of the host of serious and sometimes fatal complications associated with these procedures, there are two equally glaring requirements in this bill that have garnered very little attention.
First, SB 733 removes the requirement that a pregnant woman seeking an abortion undergo a fetal transabdominal ultrasound at least 24 hours prior to obtaining an abortion, or at least two hours prior to obtaining an abortion if the pregnant woman lives at least 100 miles from the facility where the abortion is to be performed. Second, the bill removes language classifying facilities that perform five or more first-trimester abortions per month as hospitals for the purpose of complying with regulations establishing minimum standards for hospitals.
These two provisions in this Bill are important for one very critical reason – they were both established to protect the life of the mother.
Following the 1992 Supreme Court ruling in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, states were granted more freedom to regulate abortion, and informed consent laws requiring abortion providers to advise pregnant women of any health risks associated with an abortion began being passed. Prior to this time, uninformed consent of the patient was the norm. Specifically, the majority of private abortion clinics were not providing after-hours care, nor were they providing any form of elevated care for complications such as uterine perforation and post-operative hemorrhaging. In addition, most abortion doctors were not following the progress of their patients and were, therefore, unaware of any long-term consequences from the abortion – such as infertility, subsequent birth prematurity, or depression. Accordingly, it was impossible for those doctors to adequately provide their patients with sufficient information in order for them to meet the informed consent standards even though U.S. courts had ruled that doctors have a “continuing duty” to provide their patients with up-to-date information concerning potential risks.
The legal and ethical doctrine of informed consent encourages those undergoing medical procedures to familiarize themselves with the process and the associated risks, and ultrasounds are a way of providing women and their doctors with important information about not only the fetus but also about the pregnancy. In fact, Stuart Campbell, the creator of the three and four-dimensional obstetric ultrasound declared that the images of the fetus that he has seen on the ultrasound screen have convinced him that there should be no right to abortion. He further states that a sonogram requirement “equips a woman with the tools to make her own decision as to when life begins.”
Increased evidence shows that women who view an ultrasound image of their fetus prior to abortion are less likely to go through with an abortion than those who do not view the image. In fact, every state that has an ultrasound requirement law has an abortion rate that is lower than the national average. Additionally, abortion rates began declining nationally at the same time that ultrasounds started to be used as a diagnostic tool for pregnancies.
The four-dimensional ultrasound is the latest advancement in fetal imagery. While the two-dimensional ultrasound allows the technician to see the development of the fetus, the mother is often left unsure of what she viewed on the monitor. On the other hand, a four-dimensional ultrasound allows the mother to see her baby yawning, blinking, sucking his or her thumb, and even dancing to music.
Given that we now have technology that shows that the baby growing inside it’s mother’s womb is a living being with a heartbeat and feelings, why does the Left want to take away the opportunity for her to see her unborn child before deciding to terminate her pregnancy?
This brings us to the provision in the bill that removes the requirement that abortion facilities that perform five or more first-trimester abortions per month be classified as hospitals. These measures were created in numerous states throughout America to provide health and safety protections for patients undergoing abortions in non-hospital settings after numerous undercover reports revealed: unsterile conditions in abortion clinics, abortions performed without anesthesia, premature dismissals from recovery rooms, falsifications of medical records, and kickbacks paid for abortion referrals.
Under the current law in Virginia, abortion clinics are treated like ambulatory surgical centers and are subject to regulations that are established by the Board of Health. These measures were implemented in 2011 following the discovery that abortion practitioners were covering up both prostitution and botched abortions, that fetal body parts were being stored in containers, and that Pennsylvania abortionist Kermit Gosnell was found killing infants inside his filthy clinic.
Shouldn’t we apply and enforce all the safety standards and best-practice regulations that are imposed on every other inpatient and outpatient surgical unit? Don’t we want to ensure the safety of all Virginians who undergo a surgical procedure?
If so, then why does the Left want to take away the very regulations that guarantee the safety of abortion centers for those women who make the unfortunate choice of abortion?
