Professor Sanger Speaks on Use of Ultrasound Before Abortion

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New York, November 13, 2009 -- Twelve states require a woman to undergo an ultrasound examination and be offered an image of her fetus before obtaining an abortion. According to Carol Sanger, the Barbara Aronstein Black Professor of Law, it’s another weapon in the arsenal of anti-abortion forces, but one that does nothing to advance the debate over abortion.

 

Sanger spoke about the issue on Thursday, Nov. 12  in a lecture entitled “Abortion and the Visual Construction of Loss,” at 4:00 p.m. in Jerome Greene Hall, Room 701. Anne Higonnet, an art history professor at Barnard College, delivered a response.

 

“Characterizing the fetus as a child, as most ultrasound statutes do, is a political description, not a scientific one,” Sanger said. 

 

“It confuses medically informed consent with what I identify as morally informed consent, that realm of personal considerations that are a woman’s alone to determine. Imbued with indelible social meaning, the mandatory ultrasound requirement is less informed consent than veiled coercion.”

 

Sanger, one of the nation’s leading experts on family law and abortion rights, said while there is no accurate data to determine whether such laws act as a deterrent to abortions, that is their intent. She argued in a 2008 UCLA Law Review article on this topic that the statutes in question require a woman to use her body to produce the information intended to dissuade her from having an abortion.

 

“Looking at an ultrasound is a more complex phenomenon,” Sanger said. “Connection and joy are not universal responses to seeing images of one’s fetus.”  And that is what could ultimately blunt the effects of mandatory-ultrasound laws. “In spite of all the reasons ultrasound may persuade women not to abort, one million women still have abortions every year. Sixty percent are mothers who already have children,” Sanger said.

 

Sanger’s lecture was sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women & Gender at Columbia University, and the Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law.

  

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