Mom, meet your (unborn) child!

Mom, meet your (unborn) child!
Pregnancy centers use ultrasounds to give women opportunity to bond
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Posted: January 21, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Pro-life advocates are adopting a new tactic to reduce the demand for abortion, and it has proven so successful it already is being credited with saving tens of thousands of lives: They just introduce the mother to her child.

They do it with an ultrasound machine, which can provide a real-time video image of the unborn child throughout the pregnancy, and the simple medical procedure could reduce the demand by mothers for abortion to a fraction of its current level, according to Kim Conroy, director of sanctity of human life issues for the Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family.

That group about three years ago launched its national Option Ultrasound program which helps provide the expensive machines to pregnancy centers, helps train people to accurately run the procedures, and helps advance the status of the centers from counseling offices to medical clinics.

The first goal of the ultrasound is to confirm a pregnancy, something abortion clinics use the same technology to reveal (although standard abortion clinic policy is to prevent the mother from seeing the image under any circumstance), but then something else happens in a pregnancy crisis center.

"In the course of that, this miraculous thing that happens is this woman comes face to face with her unborn child," Conroy told WND. "Before it was theoretical information, but now it's 'This is not a blob of tissue, it's not some undefined mass,'" she said. "We want women to have all the facts that they need to make a good healthy decision for themselves and their baby.

"We have had incredible results reported back, both anecdotally, where centers have told us 'We have had this most phenomenal experience,' and statistically," Conroy said. "Eighty-seven percent of the women who are at risk for abortion who undergo both counseling within the centers and ultrasounds are changing their minds and making a statement of their intention to carry their babies."

"This is just a huge response," she said. "We're projecting that up to this date, 31,000 babies may have received life because of these centers' intervention."

And that's with 281 ultrasound units installed through the program so far. The program's goal is to have 650 operating by the year 2010.

"Women deserve factual information regarding their pregnancy. There are significant health risks with abortion, and at the very least they have a right to know the truth regarding this risky procedure from professionals who will not benefit financially from their decision. They also need to know there are positive alternatives for them and their babies," Conroy said

"Women have been fed a lie by abortionists," she said. "Those who are considering an abortion need to know the emotional and physical toll this procedure could have on them – and they deserve the chance to see their baby face to face before they make this life-changing decision."
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