"The View" on pre-abortion ultrasound

Whoopi Goldberg Frets Fewer Abortions Would Mean More Parents Kill Kids Later

Yeah. We've heard that song before. Carl Tyler of the Centers for Disease Control testified before Congress around 1970, trying to get them to legalize abortion on demand. He admitted that this would increase maternal deaths, but felt it would be totally worth it because "it will totally eliminate child abuse in a single generation."

Fifty million aborted babies later and we still have child abuse, more than ever. What went wrong? Did we kill the wrong fifty million? Or was fifty million not enough?

Goldberg argued that it's pointless to show the woman the ultrasound -- far better to keep her in the dark. "There's not a woman that goes, there's not a woman out there who makes a decision to have an abortion lightly. It is a tough, a tough, but to have someone compound what you are already carrying, you are already going in there with that pain because maybe you didn't want to have an abortion, maybe you can't have a baby. .... What difference does it make if you're going to bring a baby in and you can't feed it and you can't take care of it and then people end up killing their kids? I hate it!"

First of all, the reason that ultrasounds tend to dissuade women from abortions isn't purely an informational sort of thing. It's awakening the maternal bonding. Once she sees the baby, she bonds with it. And bonded mothers, by and large, are not the ones that kill their babies. But Goldberg prefers to cling to the same disproved theory Carl Tyler espoused. Just keep doing more and more and more and more abortions, and sooner or later you'll preemptively kill the babies whose mothers would have just killed them later anyway, right?

Second of all, how patronizing is it to withhold information on the grounds that it might be distressing? This "Don't worry her pretty little head" approach is embraced by the abortion lobby and by many legal abortion supporters, but it's hardly respectful of women. If she's not going to cope well with the knowledge that the abortion she's considering will destroy a baby, how will she cope with learning later that the abortion she already consented to killed a baby? If the news will be so distressing, it's far better to get the information in advance, before an irreversible decision is made. But again, the abortion lobby and many abortion supporters like to pretend that all will be well, of only we can destroy this troubling fetus before Mom gets attached to it.

Goldberg even dismissed her co-host Sherri Shepherd (who has admitted to multiple abortions). Shepherd said that had she seen an ultrasound before undergoing an abortion, "the guilt probably would have made me say I don't want to kill my baby."

"I don't believe that. I don't believe you, Sherri. I don't believe that," Goldberg responded. Yup, dismiss all evidence contrary to your pet theory, even when it comes from somebody one your own side. I guess "Trust Women" excludes not only prolife women, but prochoice women who don't toe the line.

Joy Behar leaped on the "back alley" bandwagon -- which is so throughly broken down that I hate to dignify it by mentioning it. I'll just refer interested readers to:

The unmistakable, undeniable, clear impact of legalized abortion on maternal mortality

The Bad Old Days of Abortion

Lysol douche ads -- These are for real!

Coathanger abortions

Of course, there is also the standard banter about how anything that stands between a woman and an immediate, no-questions-asked abortion is "telling a woman what to do with her body."

First of all, an ultrasound is a standard part of abortion. If she's going in for an abortion, she has already made the choice to undergo an ultrasound, just as somebody going in for a root canal is also making the choice to undergo the dental x-rays that are part of that. All the law does is give her the chance to see the ultrasound. Only in the twisted logic of abortion advocacy is offering to show somebody their pre-procedure diagnostic imaging "controlling" what they do with their bodies.

Second of all, abortion is something that a woman is choosing to do to somebody else's body. Just as the law dictates that you can't use your body to rape or strangle somebody, or to torch a building, or chug beer behind the wheel of a car, the law can very well dictate that you can't use your body to have somebody else's body pulled into bloody chunks at your behest. Be a grown-up, for crying out loud!

And clearly these women are clueless about ultrasounds, since Behar characterizes is as "put a camera up your vagina". The law allows the abortionist to choose whatever ultrasound TRANSDUCER he prefers. It in no way involves CAMERAS. And again, any competent abortionist is going to do the ultrasound anyway. The law just means he has to offer to show it to the woman and to describe what it shows, since it can be difficult for a layman to make out exactly what an ultrasound is showing.

Hasselbeck does note that offering to let the woman see the ultrasound is akin to a computer program responding to a file deletion command with "This file may contain important data. Are you sure you want to delete it?"

I'd go further than Hasselbeck. We're not talking about computer files here. We're talking about human beings. If you want to have one destroyed at your request, but you'd better be willing to look at that person and sign a form saying, "Yes. I want that person to die." Anything less is evading your own role in that person's death.