Live Action’s newest investigative video shows that Planned Parenthood uses ultrasounds almost entirely for one purpose: abortions. As this woman shares from her personal experience, most Planned Parenthood facilities are more than happy to take a woman’s money and do an ultrasound — but only if it accompanies an abortion.
Don’t want an abortion? Well, then Planned Parenthood by and large doesn’t want to give you an ultrasound.
Planned Parenthood’s focus on ultrasounds for abortion isn’t just confirmed by the Live Action video and all the Planned Parenthood staffers whose voices can be heard on the phone calls. Two former Planned Parenthood managers, Sue Thayer and Ramona Trevino, explain in a two-minute video that almost every ultrasound at Planned Parenthood has a singular purpose: abortion.
And even beyond these Planned Parenthood staffers and managers, abortionists across the nation are willing to admit the real purpose of ultrasounds at abortion facilities. As CNN reported, Deborah Nucatola, the senior director of medical services at Planned Parenthood Federation of America “talks about doctors performing abortions in which ultrasound is used to ascertain the best location to grab the fetus with forceps. ‘We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver because we know that, I’m not going to crush that part,’ she says.”
Amna Dermish, who commits late-term abortions up to 22 weeks also spoke specifically about “using ultrasound guidance to convert the child to breech presentation in order to extract the baby up to the head.” She explains using the ultrasound screen to find the baby’s spine and grab it first: “I always try to and keep the trunk intact, just by function. I always try to aim for a spine to bring it down.” She also discusses how she “strives for” keeping the baby’s head intact so the brain can be used as a medical specimen.
A formerly pro-choice nurse, Cynthia Isabell, describes what she saw on an ultrasound screen that was used during an abortion:
I watched the baby through the ultrasound as the doctor injected saline solution into the uterus. Immediately the baby recoiled in pain as the saline started burning its skin. I started crying and had to leave the room. Later, when the doctor reprimanded me for my reaction, I told her that the abortion was barbaric and that I would never help with one again.
Abby Johnson, a former director at Planned Parenthood, was also changed by what she witnessed on an ultrasound screen used during an abortion:
My eyes still glued to the image of this perfectly formed baby, I watched as a new image entered the video screen. The cannula — a strawshaped instrument attached to the end of the suction tube — had been inserted into the uterus and was nearing the baby’s side. It looked like an invader on the screen, out of place. Wrong. It just looked wrong. …
The next movement was the sudden jerk of a tiny foot as the baby started kicking, as if it were trying to move away from the probing invader. As the cannula pressed its side, the baby began struggling to turn and twist away. It seemed clear to me that it could feel the cannula, and it did not like what it was feeling. And then the doctor’s voice broke through, startling me.
“Beam me up, Scotty,” he said lightheartedly to the nurse. He was telling her to turn on the suction — in an abortion the suction isn’t turned on until the doctor feels he has the cannula in exactly the right place.
I had a sudden urge to yell, “Stop!” To shake the woman and say, “Look at what is happening to your baby! Wake up! Hurry! Stop them!”But even as I thought those words, I looked at my own hand holding the probe. I was one of “them” performing this act. My eyes shot back to the screen again. The cannula was already being rotated by the doctor, and now I could see the tiny body violently twisting with it. For the briefest moment the baby looked as if it were being wrung like a dishcloth, twirled and squeezed. And then it crumpled and began disappearing into the cannula before my eyes. The last thing I saw was the tiny, perfectly formed backbone sucked into the tube, and then it was gone. And the uterus was empty. Totally empty.
Some abortionists are willing to admit why they don’t want women to view an ultrasound prior to an abortion, as this collection of specific quotes from Sarah Terzo illustrates:
“They [the women] are never allowed to look at the ultrasound because we knew that if they so much as heard the heart beat, they wouldn’t want to have an abortion.” — Dr. Randall, former abortionist
“We tried to avoid the women seeing them [the fetuses] They always wanted to know the sex, but we lied and said it was too early to tell. It’s better for the women to think of the fetus as an ‘it.’” — Norma Eidelman, abortion clinic worker
“Sometimes we lied. A girl might ask what her baby was like at a certain point in the pregnancy: Was it a baby yet? Even as early as 12 weeks a baby is totally formed, he has fingerprints, turns his head, fans his toes, feels pain. But we would say ‘It’s not a baby yet. It’s just tissue, like a clot.’” — Kathy Sparks
“Sonography in connection with induced abortion may have psychological hazards. Seeing a blown-up, moving image of the embryo she is carrying can be distressing to a woman who is about to undergo an abortion, Dr. Sally Faith Dorfman noted. She stressed that the screen should be turned away from the patient.” — Editorial on Abortion
Another former abortionist, reveals how the truth ultrasounds reveal is intentionally kept from women:
“The picture of the baby on the ultrasound bothered me more than anything else. The staff couldn’t take it. Women who were having abortions were never allowed to see the ultrasound.” — former abortionist, Joseph Randall, M.D.
