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According to a comprehensive new study published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, the overwhelming majority of women who seek abortion care do not change their minds after receiving and viewing a sonogram.

Researchers reviewed nearly 16,000 visits to a provider where women were given the option to view their ultrasound image before going forward with an abortion. While a majority chose not to look, women did opt to view the sonogram a little over 40 percent of the time. Among the women who elected to view the image, 98.4 percent still went forward with the abortion. (Ninety nine percent of the women who did not view the ultrasound went forward with the procedure.)

The small number of women who viewed the image and changed their minds were part of the 7.4 percent of patients who had expressed low or medium certainty about their choice upfront. Meaning, they had mixed feelings about whether or not to go forward with the procedure from the start, their uncertainty wasn’t suddenly conjured by viewing the sonogram. Zero percent of women who expressed confidence in their medical decision were persuaded to change their minds after the ultrasound, because “such viewing does not alter decisions of the large majority of women who are certain that abortion is the right decision,” the researchers concluded.

But forced ultrasound laws are still harmful and present a very real barrier to women’s access to reproductive health care, just not the barrier intended by the creeps at Americans United for Life......

Relationship Between Ultrasound Viewing and Proceeding to Abortion

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OBJECTIVE: Ultrasound scanning is a routine part of preprocedure abortion care, and many health care providers offer patients the opportunity to view their ultrasound images. It has been speculated that ultrasound viewing will dissuade women from having an abortion. We examine whether viewing the image is associated with choosing to continue the pregnancy.

METHODS: Data from medical records for 15,575 visits by women seeking abortion care at a large, urban abortion provider in 2011 were analyzed for factors associated with choosing to continue the pregnancy. All patients received a preprocedure ultrasound scan and were offered the opportunity to view the image.

RESULTS: Patients opted to view the ultrasound image 42.5% of the time. Nearly all pregnancies (98.8%) were terminated: 98.4% of pregnancies among women who viewed their ultrasound images and 99.0% of pregnancies among the patients who did not. Among women with high decision certainty, viewing was not associated with deciding to continue the pregnancy. Viewing was significantly associated with deciding to continue the pregnancy only among the 7.4% of women who reported medium or low decision certainty about having an abortion (adjusted odds ratio 3.21, 95% confidence interval 1.18–8.73).

CONCLUSION: Voluntarily viewing the ultrasound image may contribute to a small proportion of women with medium or low decision certainty deciding to continue the pregnancy; such viewing does not alter decisions of the large majority of women who are certain that abortion is the right decision.