What Went Wrong On Ultrasound And How We Can Learn

The biggest reason that this ultrasound bill blew-up in the GOP's face this past week was simple . . . the leadership and many many members of the General Assembly were too insulated in their core belief to realize what a dumb idea this was.  From elected officials to bloggers to some grassroots activists I know, there was near-unanimity that this should have passed.  In defending the bill, so many on are side put forth a strong pro-life argument and could even get nasty about it.  Here's the problem . . .

Most folks didn't look at this as a pro-life issue.

For the most part, conservatives have turned the tide on the abortion debate on the margins.  We've won the argument on partial birth, parental consent, medical standards for clinics, among other things.  But all of those were not mandating invasive procedures.  What we saw as a pro-life issue, most folks saw as government-mandated invasive procedure.  Women know what that procedure is, its not fun, and it is also expensive.  It is specialized, not something just anyone can do.  This isn't what were selling it to be.

I love my wife.  One of the reasons I do is because she has turned out to be the perfect sounding board for me on issues like this.  She's not particularly political, she doesn't have an ideology, she's just a hard-working pragmatic women who looks at each issue and each candidate separately from party loyalty or other such things that get in our way.  When I asked her about this she was horrified.  She said that these people had no idea what they were talking about.  I was already ideologically inclined to not support it, but she gave me a window into how the reaction might be. 

The problem is too many people at all levels of our party become too isolated within our world and ideology and it allows stuff like this to happen because we don't understand or think its an overreach.  But we should have.  It is a lesson moving forward, Republicans cannot become so isolated from reality in pushing these bills, and cannot be so arrogant with those who disagree.

Comments

[Loudoun Insider]

Excellent analysis. And Dave Albo certainly didn't help things in the minds of most women.

[Todd L]

I'm sorry, but I think this is incorrect.

The thing to understand here is that the left was willing to lie about this legislation from the beginning, secure in the knowledge their media allies would back them up. You can't have an abortion without having an ultrasound. Planned Parenthood does them before performing what they call, horrifically, 'treatment', but they don't show the woman the results. This bill mandated that she be shown the results. The pro-abortion left doesn't want that because anything that shows the woman what's in there may increase the chance she pauses.

I expect the other side to lie when it suits. I don't expect our side to abet that through ignorance or opportunism. I don't care as much about gun ownership rights as other Republicans, or illegal immigration, but when Democratics distort the truth on those issues or lie about Republican bills that would affect either, I do my best to correct that misinformation. I would have hoped that those in the GOP who did not strongly support this legislation would at least have understood that allowing the left to lie about the bill would be harmful to Republicans. Instead some Republicans repeated the lies, or retreated from them in a manner that suggested they should be accepted. The result has been an emboldened opposition, a party in retreat that should not have to be, a national black eye for the RPV and Bob McDonnell, and, oh yeah- more abortions successfully performed. In the next few decades, as Republicans we're going to have to make the case for the government sugar daddy to see its size, and correspondingly its ability to hand out largesse, cut dramatically. When I see how we handle fights like this, I worry about our prospects.

[Chris]

Todd, the problem is that we are mandating the government force medical actions in something that, while horrific, is legal. What kind of precedent does that set? How are we to fight government-mandated health care when we are doing the same thing?

[Fairfax Volunteer]

Thankfully, the Democrats seem to not be learning any lessons from us and are now attempting an overreach of their own by threatening to shut down the entire state government over.... committee chairmanships.

[Disappointed]

Some of the elected officials who supported this have admitted they didn't know what they were supporting. They didn't know what the procedure they were supporting involves. Ultrasound is an invasive and unpleasant procedure early in pregnancy. You cannot get a picture without a scary probing until much, much later. How did they not know this? I am left to conclude that these particular elected officials are stupid, stupid people.

I am pro-life, I vote Republican nearly all of the time, and I was horrified by this whole fiasco. I reject liberal and progressive idealogues because they are always trying to engineer a better society by taking away individual liberties. Having the state force citizens to do things they think will make the world a better place. I guess I expected smarter things from Republicans. Disgusted. Disappointed.

If we want fewer abortions, we should put our efforts towards providing women who believe they are in difficult pregnancy situations with the assistance they need to choose life. There are so many efforts that individuals can support to do that. I'd rather donate to a crisis pregnancy service that will help a woman choose to have her baby, than have my tax dollars spent on gyno-police to follow up on the doctors and patients who don't really want to submit to a state-sponsored probing.

[Todd L]

I hesitate to repeat this, but will anyway- abortion providers already perform ultrasounds. No woman having an abortion would be undergoing a procedure she wasn't already going to have to undergo. Even pro-abortion activists have acknowledged this: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/va.-governor-dilutes-pro-life-bill/

I think the elected officials did know. This law would have made Virginia the 7th state to require an ultrasound prior to pregnancy (see the linked article) so we weren't breaking new ground. I think Republicans were unprepared for the speed and strength of the attack and the viciousness of the lies propagated by the other side. It didn't help that McDonnell, who ordinarily seems to be a good advocate for his causes, now seems to have his eyes on the VP slot and backed down at the first sign of trouble.

Disappointed, I don't disagree that the best pro-life campaign has to involve assistance to women in difficult situations. I believe in that so strongly I donate to local centers, help in our church's fundraising efforts for them, and have given no-longer-needed baby goods to them. But there are some women who either do not know they exist or do not have access to them, but do have friends or family willing to take them to an abortion provider. Requiring a doctor to tell the woman she can be provided results of the ultrasound she was going to have to undergo anyway to have an abortion does not seem invasive to me.