Elaine Wilcox-Cook

It is the year 2012, almost 40 years since Roe vs. Wade passed, yet the government is still trying to punish women for legally exercising control over their bodies with state-sanctioned rape. Recent bills requiring a woman to have a trans-vaginal ultrasound before she can have access to an abortion are medically unnecessary and immoral.

Virginia’s trans-vaginal ultrasound bill recently came under media scrutiny, and with good reason. The state’s SB 484 would require all pregnant women seeking a legal abortion to have an ultrasound performed on them, and be offered the option to hear the fetal heartbeat and view the image. Supposedly this is to determine the gestational age, a legitimate concern when a woman is at a stage of pregnancy that may be past the date of viability. However, 88 percent of abortions occur in the first trimester, when an abdominal ultrasound is useless because the embryo is too small to be sensed. This bill would mandate women whose gestational age is not in question to have a probe inserted into their vagina without their consent (rape under Virginia law), and to receive an unnecessary image of an embryo that most likely no one would even be able to see.

If the image is not medically necessary, why do conservatives want to force women to view it? Can it be they really believe women will change their minds when presented with an image, that they require the option to hear a fetal heartbeat to understand what an abortion is?

Sixty-one percent of women who obtain abortions have already had children and know what pregnancy entails. They have held their baby in their arms, and they have made the legal choice to get an abortion. It is insulting to act as though these women haven’t thought out their choice and that if offered the chance to see an ultrasound, they will view it and change their minds in the mandated one day delay between ultrasound and procedure. This bill is not only insulting to a woman’s agency, it is vindictive — since the procedure is not medically necessary in any way, insurance providers won’t cover it, forcing women to pay thousands out of pocket.

As of Tuesday, SB 484 passed in the House — with an amendment that trans-vaginal ultrasounds cannot be required, only abdominal ultrasounds. What a wonderful day! Sure, 88 percent of Virginian women seeking an abortion will be forced to pay out of pocket for a medically unnecessary and useless procedure — but at least they won’t be forced to have something shoved up their vaginas for no reason other than an attempt at inducing guilt, which is an insult to their mental capacity. The fact that narrowly avoiding mandated rape is a victory for women in Virginia is despicable.

In Texas, an equivalent bill passed and has been in place since Oct. 1, also violating the State’s statute on sexual assault. Under Texan law, rape victims would be forced to get this ultrasound — meaning they would be raped twice. Besides trans-vaginal ultrasounds, practitioners must play the heartbeat and describe the fetus. This law makes it even more difficult for women to obtain abortions, requiring that the doctor that administers the abortion be the same doctor that administered the ultrasound. In a state where 92 percent of counties have no abortion provider, this has forced doctors to fly around the state to allow women to get a legal medical procedure.

If a woman is willing to receive counseling discouraging her from having an abortion, wait 24 hours and travel to another county for an ultrasound that she will pay out of pocket (before waiting another 24 hours for the procedure), I don’t think she’s going to suddenly change her mind because she’s had a probe inserted all the way into her cervix, and she’s forced to hear a fetal heartbeat. She might cry tears of rage, that’s what I would do, but I don’t think she’s going to leap out of her chair and go “Oh my God, I didn’t realize! If I’d known that my embryo was half an inch, I never would have gone through this whole business! I guess I’m going to have a baby!”

According to Planned Parenthood, this isn’t the case: there’s been no significant drop-off in the number of abortions in Texas since the sonogram law passed. Louisiana, which also requires two trips and an ultrasound, has only seen an increase in abortions since these restrictive laws have gone into place. These laws do not discourage women from obtaining abortions, although they do make obtaining them more difficult — these laws only make the experience unnecessarily painful. These laws only exist to shame and traumatize women, and if you have any respect for women, you are against these shameful government intrusions.