A SOUND WAY TO DECREASE THE NUMBER OF ABORTIONS

WASH POST:

On June 6, Cheryl Smith took her last $600 and drove her teenage daughter from Baltimore to Severna Park to get an abortion. When they got there, a receptionist told them the clinic had changed hands. The abortion provider had moved a few miles away, she said, but the new clinic would offer a pregnancy test and sonogram for free.

The Smiths stayed. After they saw a picture of the fetus at 21 weeks with arms and legs and a face, their thoughts of termination were gone.

... ultrasound exams have proven effective in convincing women to stay pregnant. A 2005 survey by Care Net, a Sterling-based network of about 1,000 antiabortion pregnancy centers in the United States and Canada, found that 72 percent of women who were initially "strongly leaning" toward abortion decided to carry their pregnancies to term after seeing a sonogram.

THEY DON'T SEE A SONOGRAM; THEY SEE A BABY. A BABY. A BABY HUMAN. THEIR BABY. THEIR CHILD. THEY SEE THEIR CHILD'S FACE. AT 21 WEEKS - WHEN MANY ABORTIONS ARE PERFORMED - THE BABY HAS A FACE. THE FACE PROBABLY LOOKS LIKE MOMMY'S AND DADDY'S. IT'S NOT A FACELESS FETUS. IT'S A BABY.

The additonal information the sonogram provides disrupts the denial upon which pro-abortion arguments are based. That's why this process works. It empowers the mother to see her pregnancy is not mere inconvenience, but motherhood. And it proves that adoption is the best answer to an unwanted pregnancy, not an abortion.

[ASIDE: AS I HAVE BLOGGED BEFORE: One day, a woman might also have the choice of freezing her embryo, and then implanting it when she wants the baby. Or donating it.]