This piece was originally published on ADFlegal.org and was written by Marissa Mayer.
As someone who avoids going to the doctor unless something is obviously broken or infected, being pregnant and having monthly checkups has been quite the adjustment.
But perhaps the biggest change has been that I actually long for these appointments. It’s certainly not the being poked and prodded that is so alluring. Nor is it being weighed and measured to the point that I’ve stopped looking at the scale for my own sanity.
What I look forward to—no, what I yearn for every four weeks—is the chance to see my baby on the ultrasound screen.
Maybe it’s the fact that besides some occasional bouts with sleepiness and the subtle tightening of clothes around my waist, I’ve been virtually symptomless through my first trimester. No morning sickness, no cravings (beyond my normal desires for Mexican food and macaroni and cheese), no food aversions, no extreme fatigue, no flood of tears for no apparent reason.
And you know what—as much as I am thankful that my first pregnancy has been fairly uneventful thus far—a part of me has missed those constant reminders that there is a new life growing inside my body. I wanted to feel pregnant, instead of having to remind myself that I am.
That’s why I cherish the chance to see and know that my baby is not a figment of my imagination, but a living, growing, literally-looking-and-waving-at-me-from-inside-my-abdomen tiny human.
Unfortunately, too often mothers don’t get the chance to see what I see. They’ve been coached by the abortion lobby to look away from the ultrasound. They are told that the pregnancy is just a temporary annoyance that can be removed with some medication or surgical intervention if they choose.
The truth is, the abortion industry isn’t a fan of the ultrasound. They don’t celebrate the ability to see live pictures of your baby in the womb, when their goal is to end that baby’s life for money. They don’t want you to hear the baby’s heartbeat or watch the baby wave or suck his thumb on screen because it doesn’t fit with their narrative that unborn babies are not living human beings.
Abortion advocates’ disgust for the ultrasound has gotten so bad, that The Atlantic published an article on the topic earlier this year that originally had a subheading that read, “The technology has been used to create an imaginary ‘heartbeat’ and sped up videos that falsely depict a response to stimulus.”
While The Atlantic has since issued a long correction and removed the reference to “an imaginary ‘heartbeat,’” the intention of the article remains the same.
Abortion advocates want women to see ultrasounds as political tools that are used to deceive, rather than scientific technology that shows that “glob of cells” for what he really is—a baby.
Consider that when Planned Parenthood recently released two new videos claiming to explain the abortion process, it depicted the baby in the womb being sucked out with a vacuum or removed with “other tools” as nothing more than a tiny dot on the screen. In reality, the abortionist or someone else must sift through and identify the baby’s remains after he’s ripped from the womb in order to ensure all of the baby body parts (arms, legs, livers, kidneys, you name it) are accounted for. How’s that for deceptive?
No matter how much the abortion lobby wants to pretend that babies in the womb aren’t really babies, the ultrasound helps show the truth. Yes, studies vary as to how many lives have been saved because a mother considering abortion saw her baby on the ultrasound, but that doesn’t change the fact that ultrasound images are powerful reminders of the humanity of unborn children.
As Big Abortion’s recent reactions to this technology indicate, ultrasounds can prove devastating to the lie that babies in the womb are nothing more than a “glob of cells.”
