Can you see anything by ultrasound if the pregnancy is really early? Like when it is still an embryo and not even a feotus yet....

I believe when a pregnancy is very early, you can only really see the amniotic sac...cause that's really the only thing there.

This site is somewhat interesting, although I don't know how accurate it is.

http://www.visembryo.com/baby/index.html

Does anyone else know if the developmental pictures on it are accurate?

We dont have this sort of thing going on in the UK so i often find the US situation shocking.

I had an abortion but because of early complications, even though the abortion had been dated, i had to go have a scan because at one stage they thought the pregnancy was ectopic. I didnt feel any emotion about it though. You couldnt see anything and it didnt change my opinion. The pro liars really are clueless about the varying emotions involved at that stage, much of which is pragmatic, head over heart stuff.

That said, i hope you guys can fight this sort of thing. It beggars belief in 2007.

Has anyone seen Knocked Up? I know I shouldn't take a popular movie as scientific fact, but there is a scene where the woman goes to make sure she is pregnant and they do an ultrasound. Not over the belly, but inside the vagina. You can't really make anything out, but there is a heartbeat. I always thought that if I needed to have an abortion, that I would be able to. Yet, if I had to look at the heartbeat inside me, I don't know if that is necessarily true. Maybe it will (for better, or worse) prevent women who would otherwise just have the procedure.

What, Brownback? NO . . . couldn't be!

lmac09, the very point is that if we're going to prevent abortions, it should be through better prevention of unintended pregnancy and creating more options for women who would otherwise want to continue their pregnancies, not through manipulation.

I am currently 32 weeks pregnant. When I saw my OBGYN for the first time, we did an ultrasound to date the pregnancy. He guessed I was between 6 and 7 weeks. All you could see was the sac, but you could also tell that it was pulsating inside and that was the heartbeat.

Isn't it harmful to the fetus to do more ultrasounds than medically necessary? Or is that just what my clinic is telling me because my insurance won't cover it anyway?

I'm 26 weeks pregnant, and I've had ultrasounds at 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 13 weeks and 21 weeks so far.

At 6 weeks, what I could see looked like a chicken egg with a smaller yolk, and on that yolk you could see a small blood vessel that flickered. They called that flickering the "heartbeat," but no heart had yet developed. It was just the early makings of the circulatory system.

At 8 weeks, what I could see looked more salamander-like, with a tail still in place but buds for arms and legs and a slightly discernable head. The heart area was more obvious, and you could see it flickering to show the beats.

At 13 weeks, what I could see was very small and weighed approximately 6 ounces (i.e., half a can of Diet Coke), but the systems had formed. I was shown the four chambers of the heart, the two lobes of the brain (which were tiny compared to the size of the head), the stomach, the spine, fingers, toes, etc. Much more identifiable as a human shape.

At 21 weeks, what I could see continued looked much more identifiable as a human shape, with more discernable individual features. We could see external genitalia, for example, fingers and toes were more proportional, and facial features could be seen easily.

Does any of this information change my opinion on abortion rights? No. I wanted a child and tried very hard to get pregnant, so I haven't considered aborting this pregnancy. But even having wanted this pregnancy and gone through some ART efforts to get pregnant, the ultrasounds didn't make me feel more bonded to my "baby," didn't make me think that what was inside me was more human or more important than I'd already thought it, didn't make me think, "Oh, now I have to do everything I can to preserve this human life!" Seeing the early heartbeats just assured me that I was at a lower risk of miscarriage. Seeing the early bodily features just assured me that I would have less need for a later-term abortion of a pregnancy where the fetus wouldn't make it.

And knowing everything I know now about fetal development, feeling all the time that this fetus is moving around inside me (and really kicking my damned ribs today -- dude! dance party on your own time!), I feel all the more committed to a woman's right to choose abortion if she feels it's right. I know not only what pregnancy is like for my fetus, but also what it is like for me. And until this fetus becomes my wanted, beloved child, the only relevant choices are mine, not those of some busybody who knows sweet fuck all about my life or the life of my fetus, and most certainly not those of a cretin like Sam Fucking Brownback, who doesn't even believe in evolution, much less the science of fetal development.

Abortion rights are my rights, because they affect my body and my fetus, and I'm intelligent and responsible enough to evaluate what those affects are on both me and my fetus. End of story.

If the ultrasound in early stages is done vaginally, isn't he advocating (metaphoric?) rape?

I've worked at three different abortion providing clinics and it was part of the protocol to do an ultrasound before any abortion (medical or surgical). If women wanted to see the screen or have a print out they could, but to require it? Total bullshit.

ekf, girl, wait til you get to 32 weeks! You can't even imagine the jumping jacks your baby can do at that point. I will look down at my stomach and literally see it bounce from side to side for minutes at a time!

I had an abortion in 1998. I was about eight weeks. At the clinic I went to, they told me that they do ultrasounds on ALL the patients, to both confirm and estimate the stage of the pregnancy. The machine was turned away from me and I didn't hear any sound. All they did was confirm what I had told them. It didn't take long and it certainly didn't feel like a tactic to try to make me change my mind.

Anyone using the oxymoron "unborn children" should not be allowed to hold any position of responsibility.

At five weeks we saw the sac but no hearbeat. At seven weeks we saw (and heard) the heartbeat, and the effect on both of us was dramatic. BUT we'd been waiting to hear the heartbeat (due to miscalculations of my ovaries, I was "supposed" to be at 7 weeks when I was actually 5 weeks, so we thought the pregnancy wasn't viable), and this was a very much wanted (although not entirely planned for) pregnancy. I would never presume that another woman would have the same response to seeing a heartbeat as I did. And even if she did, to me it all comes down to that old standby--"If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?"

mirm, that just triggers so many interesting questions for me!

So when I have been for ultrasounds for my ovarian cyst I was told that vaginal was only really neccesary if you were larger and the technician couldn't get the relevent information externally, so I was lucky (especially as they require you to have a full bladder-eek!)

So if you go for the ultrasound are they going to require that you can see pictures of a certain quality and will you have to view them for a set time. I mean if you have an external examination and the embryo/feotus is only just visible who is to say that is 'good enough'.

I'll add that my first ultrasound at 6-7 weeks was transvaginal and all of the rest have been external.

KellyD and Miss Laura Mars - I know of similar experiences. All the people I know who have had abortions in Wisconsin have had ultrasounds prior to them. But I don't know if they were required, encouraged, or offered. I even saw a printout of one of them in which we could see a white fleck the size of about a thumbnail.

So it almost seems like a case of law in action even if it's not a law in the books in all states. Does anyone have a link to a compendium of state's laws on this issue?

I think its interesting too, how with these mandatory-pre-abortion-ultrasound movement, there's such a dependency on vision & sight & seeing as somehow making the pregancy "real." American culture is so visually scripted, there's so much to be said about the intersection of reality as being dependent on visuality, as visuality as the most valued truth, and a deceptive dependence & blind trust that any image is simple, straight forward, without need for critical thought. It strikes me as so fitting that the patriarchal power structure dependent on visually demonstrating her pregnancy to a woman is the same one dependent on manipulating the images we see and don't see about our current war, katrina, etc--pick your issue. And like Jessica and Amanda speak to--the illogical proposition that all the physical/emotional/psychological changes/effects a woman feels as consequence of being pregnant aren't enough for that pregancy to be real to her--seeing the object of pregancy is what makes it real. Metaphorically, clearly its the the male "audience" the ultrasound gesture really speaks to--given the tendency for the historic patriarcy to so fetishize and value materiality and object-status of people & circumstances above all else. So it very conveniently plays right into tried & true patriarchal methods of control.

http://blogs4brownback.wordpress.com/

Just because Brownback is a a nut, I thought yall would appreciate this link to his "supporters blog" I think its a parody, but who knows these days...

Great comment, ekf. I love seeing the picture of the pregnant woman at the March for Women's Lives when it occasionally shows up in the flickr sidebar on this site. And I love how she wrote on her very pregnant belly, "She's pro-choice too!" What a great statement.

When I went in for an abortion (ended up being a moot point - my uterus took care of it for me!), I was told that they would take a vaginal ultrasound on me before they would begin the abortion. It was procedure.

I didn't mind that - but I would have minded the picture of the fetus being shoved in my face and being forced to look at it, because otherwise I might not "have known what I was doing." I knew, and I can't imagine any woman being in that situation and not knowing.

ekf--I'm 34 weeks. Wait till s/he starts kicking your bladder. That's fun. Especially at 4 am.

I'd love to see these assholes spending their time and money on bills promoting adoption and universal healthcare for the children who are born instead of worrying so much about the ones who aren't born. I guess that's the "culture of life," though.

Isn't it harmful to the fetus to do more ultrasounds than medically necessary?

The x-ray techs (one is a registered to do ultrasounds) that I work for/with say that is correct – kind of. They told me that the long term effects of multiple ultrasounds on a developing fetus is unknown.

From the ultrasound tech: "One is generally all anyone [who is healthy] should have done. After that, they should only be done if medically necessary. A young, healthy pregnant woman doesn't even need it, mostly they're done so the parents can see the baby."

Mind you, they are only wary because the long-term effects just aren't known and they feel it's better to err on the safe side.

The only reason an ultrasound should be done before an abortion procedure is to determine the age and/or placement of the fetus, otherwise, it is unnecessary and could be harmful to that precious "unborn child" they so want to safe. That is until it comes out - then it's on it's own!

Are they going to force the woman to watch the ultrasound or look at the print-out? How will that work?

@ Imaco9, BabyGirl & Wealhtheow--
The "heartbeat" is endowed with so much meaning; it symbolizes the very essence of humanity, doesn't it? Which is Brownback's point. He knows that most women don't realize that cardiac cells in culture will beat to a rhythm just as they do in early embryonic development, long bfore there is an actual heart. The point is, the legislation relies on that gut-level response to the symbolism of a beating "heart" rather than the educated and rational knowledge that it is just a cluster of cardiac cells within the embryo.

Brawnback's next initiative: Save the Petri Dishes!
Oops, been there, doing that.

Why don't we just cut the crap and call it the "Guilt-tripping Women Into Carrying Pregnancies to Term" Act, or the "Everybody Loves to Undergo a Forced and Non-essential Medical Procedure Act."

kgsavoie--very true. In fact in DC we have ads on our buses that say "The human heart begins to beat at 21 days. A doctor can stop it for the next (whatever number, can't remember, but clearly extending through the rest of the nine months) for any reason." I always want to take my sharpie and correct that--a, there is no heart at 21 days, and b, good luck finding a doctor who will terminate past the point of viability (or really at any point, these days). It's the cheapest kind of manipulation.

I think part of the impact of hearing/seeing the fetal heartbeat is that it represents such a signiicant drop in terms of a miscarriage. I think I read somewhere that this isn't so much because of the heartbeat itself, but because a majority of miscarriages occur before the typical age when one sees a heartbeat. So for me at least, a huge part of my relief and excitement at seeing the heartbeat was the feeling of "I can relax a little and start to commit to this pregnancy and this new life, because at this point my chances of having a successful pregnancy and birth are greater than my chances of not having one."

It is my understanding that most women pursue elective abortions because they don't want to have a baby in X months, so it seems to me that by going in for an abortion, you're already pretty goddamned aware that whatever is inside you will turn into a baby eventually, right?

That's the whole point. The idea that women who do not want to have or raise children could or should be emotionally blackmailed into doing so seems pretty fucked up.

"I am not ready, physically, emotionally, or financially, to have or raise a child." "But look, a heartbeat." "Oh, well in THAT case, my life circumstances have completely changed."

Uh, no.

Agreed that the heartbeat appeal is one to magical thinking and not science. Even setting aside the petri dish -- all mammals have hearts that beat, and all of their various forms of fetus have hearts that beat in utero.

Do people worry about a cat being spayed (or euthanized) while she is pregnant from a moral point of view of her fetal kittens (because, feline abortion stops their beating hearts)? No. In fact, there's some form of hella expensive and cruel lambswool that is taken from an in-utero sheep (often acquired by killing its post-born mother), and you don't hear "pro-life" advocates jumping on board the PETA wagon to curtail the stoppage of those beating sheep hearts.

A "beating heart" might signal life, but it doesn't signal human life. Even to the extent it does so, that still makes little difference in the balancing of legal rights between a woman and a fetus that relies on that woman for everything, including the continued ability to sustain that beating heart of its.

Legislatures in my home state introduced such a bill earlier this year (not sure if Jessica posted something about it), so that makes me wonder if Brownback was talking about this in SC.

Anyways, people like Brownback endorses rape by opposing abortions for victims of rape. He mentioned this in Greenville. The anti-choice movement is all about controlling women's bodies. Since January 23, 1973; the anti-choice movement has been out in force using any and all means, including terrorist attacks, in their attempts to have the SCOTUS give the government total control of women's lives. This is a fact -- if Roe is overturned -- all abortions will be illegal in ALL 50 states.

We must stop the anti-choice movement dead in their tracks.

I was thinking that a lot of women don't get ultrasounds on wanted pregnancies until 8, 10, or 12 weeks. Or later. At which point, sadly, some pregnancies are found to be non-viable (no heartbeat, etc.) D&C often follows because natural miscarriage at that point carries risks. Of course, waiting for a natural miscarriage is also terribly painful emotionally.

So if a woman seeking an abortion is forced to have an ultrasound, and the pregnancy is found to be non-viable, is the (now medically necessary) D&C going to be covered by her insurance or Medicaid? Seems like it would be hard to argue otherwise. And yet, I'm being naive.

Obviously, these assholes would prefer to let her bleed to death.

""The human heart begins to beat at 21 days. A doctor can stop it for the next (whatever number, can't remember, but clearly extending through the rest of the nine months) for any reason." I always want to take my sharpie and correct that--a, there is no heart at 21 days..."

Those make me so angry, every time I see them. If you see any that have been corrected, I may have gotten there first!

I HATE that fucker. And I try not to hate anyone. But, damn. He makes me almost ashamed to be from KS. Thank God he's not my Senator anymore. Though I suppose IL has a few winners too.

Since January 23, 1973; the anti-choice movement has been out in force using any and all means, including terrorist attacks, in their attempts to have the SCOTUS give the government total control of women's lives. This is a fact -- if Roe is overturned -- all abortions will be illegal in ALL 50 states.

Someone's projector is working well, but you might want to check your facts. They are backwards.

Roe was the Supreme Court's forcing of abortion upon all 50 states and DC. If Roe were to be overturned, each state could decide abortion law for itself. So it would be doing the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you claim.

(Eyeroll)

Seriously, they think women are enticed by those sleek ads to ask their doctor about Abortion(tm) and come in not knowing what it is?? And they have to see a fuzzy spot to fully understand? Augh. Well looks like they have one role model - that woman in NJ who didn't know that an abortion ended a pregnancy. But the rest of us...we're pretty sure what's going on!

I love this essay at Tiny Cat Pants about forced sonography:

http://tinycatpants.wordpress.com/2007/08/16/i-put-my-radical-feminist-hat-on-just-for-a-second/

It's about how condescending it is that men think women need a sonogram to know they're actually pregnant.

Roe was the Supreme Court's forcing of abortion upon all 50 states and DC. If Roe were to be overturned, each state could decide abortion law for itself. So it would be doing the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you claim.

Actually, oenophile, it's entirely possible that Congress (depending on its composition) could intervene in the abortion debate if Roe is overturned. They've already banned the "intact D&E" procedure under the so-called "Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act," and, if Roe is overturned, there would be little standing in the way of Congress acting to ban all other abortion procedures. It's only because the current jurisprudential landscape follows the "undue burden" test that earlier procedures can't be banned.

Sure, the pre-Roe landscape was a state-by-state set of restrictions, but that's no guarantee that the federal government will permit a return to such a patchwork if Roe goes away, at least in the long term. In the short term, some states would immediately outlaw all abortions and others would remain safe havens. When people cross state borders to obtain services for money, their interstate commerce can be regulated by the federal government -- and it is at that point that they can step in and do away with abortions altogether.

Of course, at such a point there would be a battle of political wills, and it's possible that such an effort would not pass. But asserting that abortion could be made illegal in all 50 states if Roe goes away is not a derisible proposition -- it is an all-too-likely scenario.

"but there is a scene where the woman goes to make sure she is pregnant and they do an ultrasound. Not over the belly, but inside the vagina. You can't really make anything out"

That seems odd. I had a vaginal ultrasound a while ago, and my doctor and I could make out the cysts on my ovaries even better than we could with an abdominal ultrasound.

"So when I have been for ultrasounds for my ovarian cyst I was told that vaginal was only really neccesary if you were larger and the technician couldn't get the relevent information externally, so I was lucky (especially as they require you to have a full bladder-eek!)"

My doc told me I needed the full bladder for the abdominal version.

What's funny about all this "abortion stops a beating heart" bullshit and the symbolic nature of a heartbeat is that an embryo or fetus' heart is only beating because the pregnant woman's heart is beating. In other words, the existence and development of the pregnancy lives and dies (quite literally) by . Brownback and his followers, however, just can't accept that something, especially something as important as the development of future generations, can be dependent on . That's why he wants control over it, because, as we know, no one knows pregnancy like a man who'll never experience it!

Ekf,

That is a great analysis of a tangential issue.

Assertion: If Roe is overturned, abortion will immediately become illegal in all 50 states.

Reality: If Roe is overturned, the next step will be state-by-state regulation.

Yes, Congress could regulate, but Congress is NOT the Supreme Court. I hate this fear-mongering of "If Roe is overturned, the sky will fall!" The law would revert to it's pre-1973 state.

But asserting that abortion could be made illegal in all 50 states if Roe goes away is not a derisible proposition

It is entirely derisable (and inane) when the person asserts that it will immediately happen, and that the Supreme Court will prevent any and all abortions.

As I said, you are bringing up a tangential issue. I'm not going to fight you on it; I will only ask, nicely, that you not get on my case when I'm entirely correct. I don't want to type up a freakin TREATISE because you people don't know how to read comments in context.