Ultrasound helps resolve ambivalence, rejection

Option Ultrasound Saving Lives. (HT: Women for Life)

Pregnancy centers using ultrasound machines report that 88% of their abortion-minded patient reject abortion after seeing an ultrasound of their unborn baby. This is far from the first report on the power of ultrasounds to help women get past their normal initial ambivalance toward, or rejection of, the pregnancy:

• "Surprise or shock is often the initial reaction to the validation of pregnancy. Caplan (1959) indicated that initial rejection of pregnancy is common, but that it is generally followed by acceptance at the end of the first trimester." (Lederman, Psychosocial Adaptation in Pregnancy, 1984)
  
  
• "Those who plead for an extensive relaxation of the law [against abortion] have no idea of the very many cases where a woman who, during the first three months, makes a most impassioned appeal for her pregnancy to be 'finished,' later, when the baby is born, is thankful indeed that it was not killed while still an embryo. During my long years in practice I have had many a letter of the deepest gratitude for refusing to accede to an early appeal." (A. Bourne, A Doctor's Creed: The Memoirs of a Gynecologist, 1963)
  
  
• "[Members of the 1955 Planned Parenthood conference on abortion] agreed, and this was backed up by evidence from the Scandinavians, that when a woman seeking an abortion is given the chance of talking over her problem with a properly trained and oriented person, she will in the process very often resolve many of her qualms and will spontaneously decide to see the pregnancy through, particularly if she is assured that supportive help will continue to be available to her." (Calderone, "Illegal Abortion as a Public Health Problem," American Journal of Public Health, July 1960)
  
  
• "M.J. Daly has noted that the legitimately pregnant woman, and often those illegitimately pregnant too, are ambivalent to the pregnancy. This ambivalence is so universal that it may be considered normal in the first trimester. "The Unwanted Pregnancy," Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1970." (Cited in Gardner, Abortion: The Personal Dilemma, 1972)
  
  
• "Ambivalence is another emotional response observed in many pregnant women. .... Surprise or shock may be the initial reaction, followed by very mixed feelings. .... Rubin believes that few women who become pregnant feel ready 'now.' .... Initial rejection of the pregnancy is common, Caplan states, but it is usually replaced by acceptance by the end of the first trimester." (Nichols and Humenick, Childbirth Education: Practice, Research, and Theory, 1988)

This can also be seen in the case of women who initially rejected the pregnancy enough to actually submit to an abortion, only to change their minds after learning that the fetus had survived the attempt on his or her life.

Which all, of course, makes it crystal clear why the abortion lobby is so dead-set against requiring abortionists to offer women the opportunity to see their ultrasounds prior to going through with the abortion.