The Power of Ultrasounds
Ultrasound imaging technology can help educate women and help protect babies. Because ultrasounds are versatile, portable, relatively inexpensive, non-invasive, and completely safe, many doctors use them to see fetal development throughout pregnancies.
A prenatal ultrasound test transmits high-frequency sound waves through the abdomen via a device called a transducer to look at the inside of the abdomen. Then, it records the echoes and transforms them into video or photographic images of the child in the womb. Sound waves travel until they hit a boundary between tissues, such as between fluid and soft tissue, or soft tissue and bone. At these boundaries some of the sound waves reflect back to the probe, while others travel further until they reach another boundary and reflect back. Computers interpret this information as a two-dimensional image on a screen.
Most pregnant woman receive ultrasounds around 20 weeks into their pregnancy to confirm that the placenta is healthy and that their baby is growing properly in the uterus, but they can receive ultrasounds earlier in their pregnancies to determine the presence of more than one baby and their gestational ages.
Local hospitals and pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) are the best places to get ultrasounds, with PRCs sometimes providing them at little to no cost for mothers. Ultrasounds provide women with helpful medical information, and they also give them insight into the little lives growing inside their wombs.
This is especially important for women who find themselves with unexpected pregnancies. Women in these situations may not know how to think about or react to their unborn children. Ultrasounds show women exactly what they carry in their wombs, putting into a real, live image what women may know intellectually but perhaps not realize at a deeper level.
Ultrasounds also provide an opportunity for women to connect with their children and recognize them as such. Some women facing unplanned pregnancies hesitate to view their children as their own, because of the uncertainty and fear they may be feeling.
It’s unclear what effect viewing ultrasounds has on women considering abortion. One frequently cited 2014 study from the University of California suggests that women seeking abortions probably don’t react to ultrasounds at all, and if they do, there’s a less than 1% chance they’ll actually change their minds and continue with the pregnancy rather than ending it with an abortion.
However, another source points out that the university’s study only pulled statistics from women who viewed ultrasound images during their appointments for abortions. This means that all these women had scheduled their appointments, and many of them had probably already paid for their procedures as well. We don’t actually know the effect of seeing an ultrasound image earlier on, when a woman is still considering her options and hasn’t already committed to abortion.
This means viewing an ultrasound might greatly impact women visiting PRCs for the first or second time, early on in their pregnancies when they haven’t yet made up their minds regarding whether they’ll keep their child or not. The internal statistics from Care Net suggest this, showing that among women who are still in the process of making a pregnancy decision, those offered the option to view their baby’s ultrasound image in a supportive pregnancy center environment are much more likely to continue their pregnancy.
Regardless, it seems that viewing an ultrasound image can only aid women as they make decisions about their pregnancies. Even if it doesn’t move a mother one way or another, it provides both medical and personal information that a women can’t fully understand any other way. Ultrasounds ensure that mothers and babies alike are healthy during pregnancy, allow mothers a chance to truly connect with her unborn child, and may even impact a mother enough to inspire her to choose life for her baby.
Ruth Moreno 2022
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