It's All Invasive

Recently Patricia Kilday Hart wrote an article for the Houston Chronicle in which she compares lawmaker’s reactions in the state of Texas to those in the state of Virginia regarding the use of a trans-vaginal wand in what is commonly called the Sonogram Law. In this article, which of course wasn’t labeled by The Chronicle as an op-ed, she wonders why the Virginia law got so much national attention, while the Texas law received so little. Her furor stems from the use of a 10 inch trans-vaginal wand that would be used to detect the fetus up to 10 (and rarely 12) weeks gestation. In an attempt to kill the legislation in 2011, Texas state rep Carol Alvarado D-Houston, presented the wand during Texas’ last legislative session and described the procedure. The bill still easily passed. Now a couple weeks ago the Doonesbury comic strip began lambasting the Texas law causing the strip to be moved from the comic section into the editorial section by many newspapers. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have also brought the wand into their respective comedy routines, with Colbert using it to make Republican margaritas and Stewart comparing the procedure to rape. The reaction in Virginia, according to Hart, was that the bill was “watered down”, whereas in Texas no changes were made.

So why, may you ask, has the use of the wand to obtain a sonogram prior to an abortion received so much attention and anger from the left? The answer given by Alvarado, Hart and others is that…wait for it…it’s an “intrusive” procedure. Other than medical (chemical) abortions, which can only be performed during the first 49 days of gestation and only account for between 13-17% of US abortions, every method of abortion is an invasive procedure. From suction aspiration where a plastic tube is inserted into the cervix and the suction literally rips the fetus apart, to a suction/D&C where a curette (a thin metal rod with a knife-sharp loop at the end) is inserted into the uterus and is used to dismember the fetus which is then suctioned, to D&E where forceps are inserted into the uterus to forcibly dismember the fetus, abortions are intrusive! And in up to 8% of chemical abortions suction aspiration must still be used. So to recap, it is supposedly asinine to think that a woman going in for an extremely invasive procedure (abortion) should have to undergo a trans-vaginal sonogram first while keeping in mind that the trans-vaginal sonogram only applies to gestation periods up to 10 weeks in most cases.

The article goes on to state that Texas lawmakers did not use the specific term trans-vaginal sonogram in their bill. Which maybe they didn’t, but they also didn’t refer to abortions as trans-vaginal fetus dismemberment and removal procedures which technically they could have.

And it gets better. Some of the responses to this article, as well as the comments from the likes of Stewart, delve further into issue of the sonogram law in general with opponents claiming that doctor-client privacy is being violated. No where in this or similar bills are there provisions to make public the results of the sonogram or the choice the woman makes afterward. It would seem that prior to an abortion that the doctor would have the obligation to divulge all pertinent information about the procedure. After all, doctors thoroughly go over x-rays, CT scans and MRI’s with the patient prior to performing any other medical procedure, why should this be any different?

But somehow the left wants you to believe that this is different because the government should have no place in women’s health affairs, that is of course until the left demands the government to force insurance companies to pay for contraception and other “family planning options”. The lack of logic and continued hypocrisy of the left’s argument would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

Calvin Parker

http://www.chron.com/news/kilday-hart/article/Reaction-to-trans-vaginal-sonogram-a-tale-of-2-3422249.php