NYT on Abortion.

Regular readers will know my views on abortion (for those who don’t, I’m agin’ it, in all circumstances on all occasions) so will probably be as unsurprised as I am at this report in the New York Times:

"When I had the sonogram and heard the heartbeat – and for me a
heartbeat symbolizes life – after that there was no way I could do it,"
Ms. Brown said recently as she revisited the clinic and watched her
daughter, Elora, now 9 months old, play at her feet.
….

"Generally, their treatment of women who come in is coercive," said
Susanne Martinez, vice president of public policy at the Planned
Parenthood Federation of America. "From the time they walk in to these
centers, they are inundated with information that is propaganda and
that has one goal in mind. And that is to have women continue with
their pregnancies."

Most centers still do not have ultrasound
machines. But at those that do, the results of performing sonograms
have been startling, abortion opponents say. A survey by the Heidi
Group, a Christian evangelical nonprofit organization that advises such
centers on fund-raising and administration, found that those using
counseling alone reported persuading 70 percent of women considering
abortion to abandon the idea. In centers with ultrasound machines, that
number jumped to 90 percent, said Carol Everett, the group’s chief
executive. Such statistics could not be independently verified.

Well, just fancy that. Tell women the truth and they don’t kill their children. Amazing what we can find out in the modern world isn’t it?

4 responses

  1. Don’t think one needs to share your views on abortion to be unsurprised by the article: emotional blackmail is always a good way to win over vulnerable people, irrespective of the issue or one’s side.

  2. It’s sad, but I didn’t become pro-life until I saw a sonogram at 5 weeks… (I wasn’t wanting to get an abortion… it’s just that I held the common pro-choice line about “women’s control over their bodies”, yadda yadda).
    I didn’t realize the heart was formed by then and was shocked. Every time I went to the OB, I got to see the sonogram, and it amazed me how early on alot of the development is…. and how the last couple months is just the baby bulking up.
    I am a highly educated person (masters in math), but I did not know basic human biology. When you have groups going on about how young fetuses are just “blobs of tissue”, it’s just too easy to buy into that. Because it’s too painful to think about what’s happening in this world otherwise.

  3. No offense to Ms. Brown – women should be supported in whatever decision they make – but I always find it a little strange when people decide abortion is wrong because fetuses have heartbeats. Pigs have heartbeats, dogs have heartbeats, but we don’t find that fact alone sufficient to grant them a right to life. I’ve always found it amusing that pro-lifers are opposed to animal rights, and vice versa, when an alliance between the two would make a lot of sense. I’m not saying either group is wrong – in fact I agree with both on some level – just that their philosophies need to be based on something more substantial than “oh my gosh, it has a heartbeat, so I can’t kill it”. The religious belief that a human fetus has a soul, and animals don’t, can’t be made the basis of policy.

  4. The Power Of The Sonogram At Reducing Abortions

    The New York Times writes:
    Sixteen months ago, Andrea Brown, 24 years old and unmarried, was desperate for an abortion, fearing the disappointment of her parents and the humiliation she might face.
    While frantically searching the telephone book o…

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