There's a movement afoot to regulate "non-medical" use of ultrasound machines. Currently, anyone with ample cash-- Tom Cruise, for example-- can buy a machine for personal use. But experts say that, while ultrasounds are ''generally considered safe" by the FDA, they may pose risks to the fetus if not performed by a trained sonographer.

After Cruise's purchase made news, the California Assembly passed a bill to prevent anyone but licensed medical professionals from purchasing ultrasound machines. But the law won't only apply to wealthy parents who simply want "keepsake" images of their fetus. If the legislation passes the state Senate, it could prevent the state's crisis pregnancy centers from buying ultrasound machines, too.

At crisis-pregnancy centers, which are not health clinics and usually don't employ licensed medical professionals, the sonogram is part of the illusion that they're providing women with care, not just propaganda. All of the experts' concerns about untrained personnel performing ultrasounds still apply-- untrained sonographers can actually harm the fetus they want so desperately to save from abortion. And, as Amanda pointed out recently, women can easily mistake a single ultrasound for real prenatal care, and may not go elsewhere for a thorough checkup.

The centers rely on ultrasound machines not only for legitimacy, but for government funding. In 2002, Congress considered legislation to provide $3 million in grants for crisis-pregnancy centers to purchase ultrasound machines. (Back then, according to Focus on the Family, only about 100 CPCs owned such equipment.) More recent federal legislation (now stuck in committee) seeks to do the same thing.

Pro-choicers should be pushing for greater regulation of ultrasound equipment. Such laws aren't likely to affect family planning clinics, because they're already staffed by licensed health professionals. Crisis pregnancy centers, on the other hand, are run by church group members and activists. Taking away their sonogram privileges would take away one of their primary methods of misleading women into thinking they provide actual health care. Also, this seems to me the exact sort of opportunity that anti-choicers have seized upon ever since Roe (TRAP laws, anyone?). A federal law saying only medical professionals can perform sonograms seems like a great way to "chip away" at crisis pregnancy centers' impact.

4 Comments

July 26, 2006 6:43 PM

[0+]  DAS said:

Sounds like a good thing about which to be concerned.

I would worry that our support of such a bill would be spun as "why do pro-choicers want to prevent women from having ultra-sounds?" -- and be spun that way be people ostensibly on our side looking to find compromise positions with pro-lifers ... y'all know the type.

Although, since the pro-life movement will spin things this way no matter whether the pro-choice movement takes up this cause or not, we might as well, pace the DLC types, take up this cause, don't you think?

I  Liked  Liked this comment  |  Reply |

July 26, 2006 7:46 PM

[0+]  togolosh said:

I think CPCs use the ultrasound machines mostly so they can show pregnant women and girls images of their 'baby' as part of their "abortion is murder" schtick. I imagine that the ultrasound process is accompanied by lots of running commentary about how cute and precious the 'baby' is.

I  Liked  Liked this comment  |  Reply |

July 27, 2006 12:41 AM

[0+]  Eshew Obfuscation said:

While this does seem like a victory for the pro-choice movement, it could have negative consequences.

A reaction to this legislation could be that CPCs could just end up required to recruit medical volunteers (ie Medical Doctors willing to volunteer) which would not only allow them to keep doing ultrasounds, but at the same time add legitimacy to their claims.

This could actually be a harmful piece of legislation :/

I  Liked  Liked this comment  |  Reply |

July 27, 2006 6:39 AM

[0+]  Sylke said:

I don't think this legislation is harmful at all. I think what's really harmful is a bunch of people prancing around in white coats pretending to be doctors when all they really are is lying activists. I'm sure that there are some extremist medical personnel out there who would deliberately mislead a pregnant woman so that she wouldn't terminate a pregnancy, but for the most part, doctors and nurses are ethically required to offer the facts and only the facts, and many of them strictly adhere to that. Any medical practitioner who would lie, judge and mislead shouldn't be practicing.

I hope it passes. I hope these people who do harm in these crisis pregnancy centers are revealed to be the frauds they are.

I  Liked  Liked this comment  |  Reply |

Leave a comment

Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)