As Virginia’s mandatory ultrasound law goes into effect the state has released a list of places that a woman or girl can go to obtain a free ultrasound, purportedly to help defer the additional expense incurred with the procedure. The problem is, the list is made up almost exclusively of crisis pregnancy centers.
The Virginia law requires a girl or woman who needs to terminate a pregnancy obtain an ultrasound 24 hours before the procedure, regardless if one is medically warranted or not. The states that a “qualified medical professional trained in sonography and working under the supervision of a physician licensed in the Commonwealth shall perform fetal transabdominal ultrasound imaging on the patient undergoing the abortion for the purpose of determining gestational age.” CPC’s often perform ultrasounds, but they just don’t always have medical professionals, so there’s no guarantee that an ultrasound performed by the CPC’s identified by the state would even meed the law’s requirements.
It gets worse. CPC’s are independently run women’s health “centers” that often fall outside the bounds of state regulation and oversight. A woman or girl who has an ultrasound at one of these CPC’s has no guarantee her medical information will remain private, nor does she have any guarantee the center will even turn over the image.
CPC’s entire mission is to dissuade women and girls from terminating pregnancies, regardless of the circumstances, so there’s every reason to be suspicious that these centers will throw up as many roadblocks as possible as the mandatory ultrasound law takes effect. As anti-choice lawmakers collude more openly with pseudo-health practitioners in their crusade against women’s rights the tragic reality is that women get stuck with a system that doesn’t really deliver health care at all.
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