Ultrasound: latest tool in battle over abortion

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much can we tell about life from a picture of the womb?" asks Patrick Jacks of Fort Mill, an abortion opponent who spoke at the March hearing.

Most of the approximately 1.3 million women who have abortions each year are neither offered nor shown ultrasound images by their doctors. Many obstetricians have testified that in most cases it's not medically necessary for these women to see the images.

Mandating it assumes "that women are somehow how being rushed into making these decisions," says Elizabeth Nash, a policy analyst at the Guttmacher Institute. Others argue that such laws whittle away at women's rights to abortion.

"It's obvious that what's being done is an attempt to dissuade a woman from having an abortion, the assumption being that if she sees a growing life inside her, she will hesitate or change her mind," says Harvey Kornberg, a political scientist at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J.

Court precedent allows states some leeway to limit abortion. On average, 1,000 measures on reproductive-health issues are introduced in the states each year. That trend was bolstered when the US Supreme Court upheld a state's ban on so-called partial-birth abortion on April 19, says Mr. Kornberg. About one-third of states, mostly in the South and Midwest, will continue to impose restrictions on abortion, experts predict.

"We're beginning to see these kinds of laws … to encourage pregnancy – and we're going to see more," says Kornberg.

Humanity of a fetus vs. women's rights?

Ultrasound laws are among the most hotly debated issues of the year. At the hearing in Columbia before a standing-room-only crowd, young and zealous abortion opponents who declared the humanity of the fetus took on lawyers, doctors, and a contingent of mostly older women who argued such laws are a political concoction that have "profound implications" for women's rights.

Women who know firsthand how they were affected by seeing an ultrasound agree it's a crucial time in the abortion debate. But like Staley and Burgess, they see the ultrasound laws through the lens of their own views on the morality of abortion.

For Staley, who chose to proceed with an abortion, laws that foist upon women the viewing of ultrasounds is a way to keep "the last bastion of control that society has over women."

For Burgess, who became a pro-life activist after giving birth, ultrasounds are part of a "revolution" in reproductive health that can have a positive impact on women. "[Ultrasounds] are a way of giving equal rights to women in the form of information they should know," she says. "I could no longer say, 'This is not a child and it's not happening.' "

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