As featured in tonight's segment on Virginia's pending law to require transvaginal ultrasounds of women seeking abortions, commemorative vaginal probes like these could one day be collectors' items should Virginia governor Bob McDonnell join the Republican ticket as the vice presidential candidate in 2012:
*Special thanks to Ali Davis and Jess Idres for their contributions.
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i think that if this law passes, then everytime a woman undergoes the procedure, each and every man who voted for this law must also undergo an anal probe. That would be equality.
The firestarters really want to wail on someone and you have found your scape goat. I am a certified Diagnostic Medical Sonographer. I am a female 48yo disabled gulf war veteran. I have experience as follows, 7 years of high risk OB/Gyn, 13 years as a Radiographic Technologist, 4 years as a Specialist in the US Army and during that time was raped both digitally and physically by my superiors. I ask you to please tell me of the woman, 20 years after an abortion, said "that abortion was the best choice I have made in my life". I would like to hear her opinion. I choose not to judge other peoples choices but reflect on my own. The reason I blogged is that I felt unfairly accused of being a rapist. Some may choose to name call, patronize or bolster themselves at others expense. I want the choice of all women to be educated. I work at 2 very prominent pregnancy crisis centers. Most women I encounter are uneducated about the proceedure and just want their lifestyle to remain the same as they are college kids, wives with husbands in Iraq, prostitutes, drug abusers and teens that are brought by their parents who insist they abort.
None of this makes sense. Republicans want to deny education, screening and prevention, and flat out decent economic growth and then you want to punish people with one more law for your moralizing on a women's biochemistry and physiology. Women can handle their own biochemistry.
I do love the comment about sonographers making a ton of money. Firstly, I volunteer my time to pregnancy centers and secondly (at my professional job) we perform what we are told to perform by the doctors that make a ton of money performing abortion. A woman is offered a transvaginal if the fetus cannot be seen abdominally. If refused, the doctor will go into the exam room and do the exam after speaking with her briefly. I am shocked no one has brought up ectopics. (conception and impantation outside the uterus) This condition is fatal to the woman without treatment. The only way to verify the ectopic is through TV US or a post mortem autopsy.
I think you are being a little too defensive ALL. There is nothing wrong with aborting if your circumstances are such that a child will suffer more from being alive than being aborted. Education is the ticket, but mistakes are made, accidents happen and abortion is a legal option. In your experience how many really think abortion is a day at the park? No one wants one but they are entitled to one and I don't think heaping a bunch of guilt makes the decision any easier. It only hurts the woman more, emotionally that is.
This is just another way to torture a person. It's traumatic enough to decide on abortion but then to have someone wave a sonogram in your face. This is placing guilt on top of sadness.
Sadly, that is exactly what they want. Note the smug comment that if a woman has to undergo and view the TV inspection that she will carry the guilt more deeply for the rest of her life. What a loving thought! /sarc
The further argument against abortion is that the woman deserves the "punishment" of having to carry the child for the full term and endure having to raise the child for her "sins."
I see the venom and insulting judgement by those who have no right to even consider the decisions of a living, breathing human being as their business. My morals are in line with my faith - you are entitled to your faith and your beliefs, you are simply not allowed to make decisions for me based on your faith.
Shame on you!!!!!!
The law states that a sonogram "must" be performed before any abortion. If the woman is too large, too early or her body habitus is not condusive to an abdominal ultrasound then a transvaginal is offered. I say offered only because instead of choosing a TV she can wait 2 more weeks then get another abdominal and hope it shows the fetus (who also must have a heart rate over 21 days). Point is if the client is demanding an abortion she has to choose to wait or get a TV. Evidentally our entire country is uneducated. I referred to the women I have personally dealt with. I have not written a book, done interviews, made graphs or any such nonsense. My opinion is made from experience. In fact, I have never had a client who wanted an abortion because of rape or incest. I challenge any woman born in the late 70's or 80's to try and make it through the rest of their life without a transvaginal ultrasound. Mammograms are torture but do you know someone who has died from breast cancer? I have personally found uterine, ovarian and colon cancer because of that instrument.
So a woman should be violated because you might find some sort of cancer? Women born in the 70s and 80s were brought up to believe that we were thinking individuals with choices. If you don't want an abortion, don't have one, but don't assume that those who do not share your view are uneducated. We are being forced back into a time when we are treated like nothing more than an incubator, where women are being told that our health and safety are irrelevant. Abortions are legal, whether you agree with them or not.
Reread the post. What was said is if a woman is demanding an abortion now and refuses to wait, the only option is trans-vaginal. The woman has the option to wait and get the mandated age,heartbeat from a non invasive sonogram.
You can show people a book or make them take a class. You don't have give them a forced sonogram. In fact, you want to punish these people even more financially and emotionally. I am just amazed how that fits into any decent person's frame of ethics!
Just curious, who is supposed to pay for this procedure? Since there is no medical necessity for the procedure insurance companies might not cover it. Also, what can the average VA citizen do to prevent this, or do we have to wait until the next election?
No medical necessity? Who said that. All.Life made a good point. What about ectopic pregnancies with a woman who wants an abortion? Again the law says an ultrasound is mandatory, not a mandatory trans-vaginal.
I do not think I am missing the point. I'm pretty sure every pregnant woman currently is not required to have some form of ultrasound, which indicates that the medical community does not find the procedure necessary. Therefore, if it is not considered a medical necessity, who is going to pay for the state stepping into your exam room.
Please go look up the abortion law for your state and get back. I do not think is a start for disaster if I had said it...........
The women who have chosen abortion come to the clinic with cash. The entire abortion has to be paid in full, including the sonogram, before anything is done. They can make payments but will not get the abortion until the fees are paid. The fees go up as the weeks go by so some women lose their money because they can't afford the additional fee for mork work to clean the uterus of all products of conception.
The people behind this law have an extra-ordinary, broken frame of ethics. They want as much punishment as possible.
listen up and read the law please before you go half "cocked"!! all women that want an abortion have to, BY LAW, have a sonogram obviously the people who comment here have not had, know anyone or considered an abortion. whether it be abdominal (not forced) or transvaginal (not forced) it is both her choice to have an abortion along with the sonogram or not have either. scroll back and read the law that was posted for your collective behive and learn something new.
The law is WRONG to put these restrictions! The law should not legislate in a person's body - ever! This legislation is being steamrolled across the country because this whole subject is really about votes and campaign contributions. Even if you are not usually a single-issue voter, this may be the year to vote against anybody advocating these unnecessary and invasive procedures. Women (and men who care about women) beware. Your rights are being whittled away. Where will it end?
I will tell who pays for the sonogram now. The women that want an abortion have to pay cash up front for the exam $150 where I live. The abortion is from $500-$1500 depending on whether they can vacuum the fetus out, pull the baby out, or extract the baby piece meal. There is also selective reduction of multiples that is prohibitively expensive. Most abortions will not be done in many states after the 13th to 15th week. Sonograms have been laws for abortions because many abortion mills will do the proceedure without proof of pregnancy for the money. Please note that women that pay for the abortion and are hemorrhaging will be sent to the nearest hospital and if they do not have insurance then we pay for their medical.
Why not make your statement a bit more ugly and disgusting? Why not show us all pictures of such procedures so we can all vomit together? Why not try to find an even uglier description of the procedure to prove that somehow you are truly the compassionate person? Given the fact that not all such procedures are so difficult or disgusting do you feel better with your hyperbole?
The fact is that not you or any other person has the right to force anyone to have a procedure that is against their will. Your LAW is outrageously discriminating, indecent and completely from of a desire to force people to your power. Your defense of the LAW is even more disgusting.
If you behave in person the way you have behaved in this conversation, I doubt any victim of rape or incest would find you compassionate to share what would clearly be a difficult ordeal.
ML 623073 I'm sorry your abortion affects your though processes negatively. I am trying my best not to be vindictive or blog in a hateful manner. You obviously have very strong feelings about abortion and I respect your opinion along with the choice you have made. I am glad that your choices have left you with a positive upbeat sweetness that is so hard to find in this day and age.
Funny, I don't agree with you and you decide it must be because I have had an abortion. I think it is much more likely that I am an adult who believes that my decisions and beliefs should not forced upon others. I'm not gay either, but I believe that should have the freedom to make choices about their own lives. Abortions have been legal for my entire adult life, but I'm of the age when I heard the horrible stories of what women went through prior to that. That isn't something we should aspire to go back to. Some of your so called facts seem more like self serving figures pulled out of nowhere, or something I would expect to see on Fox News.
Alone or with their girlfriends sent by their parents, boyfriends, pimps or husbands. So 20.1 let me see all the information you have collected from personal/life experience etc. The women with multiple gravid and parous few talk quite openly about their abortions, how much they cost, the pain (physical), where not to go, how to get one from a street physician (along with all the pain meds they can afford at $5-$10 a pill, and how soon you need to get to the clinic so that it wont take so long.
And now I am spent. Goodbye
Oh, so angry about all of this. Here's my blog post tying these laws to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. "Welcome to Gilead: Now Spread those Pretty Little Handmaid Legs for Your Transvaginal Ultrasound." http://lameduckemptynest.blogspot.com/2012/02/welcome-to-gilead-now-spread-those.html
Not going to read it but nice response..
This probe thing is not rape! It's a voluntary requirement prior to killing your baby and then sucking it out with a vacume. They are not holding anyone down against their will and probling them. It's american to voice your opinion if you disagree with a law but your just unreasonable idiot to call this rape.
This just has to be Louis that I went to sonography school with.....?
Specially with the spelling of vacuum...Love ya Louis....
What a horrible discusting peace of legislaltion if passed , the only argument for this would be ignorance. Its total disrespect and invasion of womens rights.
Bob needs an anal exam with a vaginal probe .. this isnt comimg from virginia so fork u bob..
the circus continues. is this the unites states of america or outer space.. cant wait to hear herman cain weigh in on this one.. will newt get permisson from calista to back up bob.. rick homeschools his girs will he administer there vaginal probes.. where does each candidate stand. dr. ron paul probably stands behind this procedure he can make some extra bucks performing ultra sounds on women for free..mitt dont have time to raise this as a religious issue he is to busy trying to figure out hot to start bitching about the government involvment in prohibiting poligamy.. he is about three or four wives short an still cant get a license to marry his daughter.. where the hell is the ringmaster in this republican circus.. newt found the elephant in the san diego zoo. but no one gave him any peanuts to pass around.. when did we start to buy crude from iran.. how may oil companies are owned by democrats..the congress is gutless in reigning in the bastards.. they hold the entire country hostage.. whining about their poor broken down refineries while doubling prices at the pump . raking in billions and cant build new refineries.. if a well burps or farts they go into fake paranoia and raise the price. if a hurricaine is forcast up goes the price if a country says they are working with nuclear energy whether we buy oil from them or not the price goes up,, lawmakers need ony to set an fix prices at three bucks a gallon in the usa and make it illegal to charge more than that and u can be sure the oil companies will find lots of cheap crude and be able to refine every drop of it and more..has anyone in the country besides me attended the third grade.. can u tell im sick of the side show here and upset over what the government is doing to make us look bad worldwide.. and what they are beginning to do to us as a people .. oil companies.. and other interests who buy influence in in washington .. and any government official accepting money from anyone to sell a vote on any issue are traitors and need to be hung on the capitol steps. getting rich is not what we vote our representatives into office for. its is to look after our interests at home and abroad.. .. every dime spent and every life lost in vietnam and every war we have entered into since that time was wasted.. why. so some politicians could become rich.. the one exception to that is the seal team that finally yanked osama bin laden out of hiding and disposed of him. he was responsible for the only real attack on the usa whichg occured here on our home soil.. going back to that event.. i remember when millions of people sent billions of dollars to the government to rebuild our symbols of financial freedom , and they managed something far less.. guess they didnt feel like anyone needed a job.. on an on.. i believe that our government believes that this country is to big to fail...that we have unlimited resources. unlimited cashflow. unlimited stupidity..i am just waiting here for one of the billionaires funding these republican candidates to send me a couple dozen millions of dollars each to be ringmaster.. i think i could handle the job from tahiti..from there i could cuss and bob wouldnt care..
This is undoubtedly state-sanctioned rape. Just because it isn't a penis that's being forced inside someone doesn't mean it isn't rape. This just shows how misogyny has been allowed to run rampant in the GOP. I blogged about it and still can't believe this is real in 2012.
http://4thwavefeminism.blogspot.com/2012/02/really.html
I look for two things. First I hope the residents of Virginia respond to all the publicity this is getting and learn just what an assault this is to women. Second I hope the residents of Virginia understand the tens of millions their government is going to waste on this in court and I hope it resonates when these same politicians defending this say they are for less government. The people pushing this bill are the biggest hypocrites on this planet. I know the people of Virginia are far more moderate than this and it is just one more example of the overreach by republicans when they get their grubby hands on power.
This insane and vicious law is the American Taliban at their worst. Mandatory rape of a woman by government order, using a vaginal probe??? This is "conservative" ???? This is "limited government" ??? These crazies have finally gone completely mad.
Vagina is for lovers. Or, as Jon Stewart put it "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" has been replaced by "I'm from the government and this probe's a bit cold".
Reading some of these comments, I have been striving to see if there is any difference between the views of the American far-right, and the those of the Taliban. Both think that men are entitled to control women's bodies, and if women are made pregnant by rape they must be forced to give birth to the child. Oh, and the Taliban, like the Republicans, think it's OK to torture their enemies.