In the movie Juno, Ellen Page's pregnant teen character is about to walk into the abortion clinic when a protestor outside yells "Your baby has fingernails!" Ultimately, the remark makes her decide to keep it. Although this (hopefully) wasn't Diablo Cody and co.'s intention, pro-life legislature has followed that example. Currently, seven states require women seeking abortions to get ultrasounds before going through with it, and three states mandate that the doctor must show and describe the ultrasound to the woman.
The psychological motivation behind this is the theory that looking at the ultrasound will cause unconscious "fetal bonding" for the mother and make her less likely to abort — however, the original study that discovered this only looked at women who wanted the baby in the first place. So when it comes to abortion-seeking women, how well does this work?
Slate reports that a new study, which examined 15,000 patient records at an L.A. abortion care provider has the answer, and it's honestly not surprising. Women were asked how confident they were in choosing abortion and were placed into two categories: High decision certainty and low-to-medium decision certainty (the latter category only 7.4 percent women fell into). Forty-two point five percent of the whole group opted to see their ultrasounds beforehand, and it's true that their ultimate rate of abortion, at 98.4 percent, was lower than the women who opted not to, at 99 percent.
However, the women who looked at the ultrasounds and opted not to go through with it were women who already had the low-to-medium decision certainty — they were less confident that this was the option for them, right from the jump. In other words, the only women changing their minds after seeing the ultrasounds weren't sure anyway. So the pro-life movement should take note: Women who are positive that abortion is right for them won't be fazed by their manipulative tactics.
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