As the 2016 General Assembly session approaches, there will be no shortage of controversial topics debated.



As the 2016 General Assembly session approaches, there will be no shortage of controversial topics debated.

Among those is the future of a law which requires women to receive ultrasounds before abortions.

Passed in 2012 by Virginia’s now-disgraced former Governor Bob McDonnell, the mandatory ultrasound law requires women to undergo an ultrasound, either external or trans-vaginal (whichever gets the better image), 24 hours before terminating a pregnancy.

An image from the ultrasound must be taken and kept on file “to document the measurements that have been taken to determine the gestational age of the fetus.”

If the woman was the victim of rape or incest, the ultrasound is not required, but only if the rape or incest was recorded to the police.

The doctor performing the procedure is also required to offer the woman the chance to see the ultrasound, look a the printed image, and listen to the heart beat from the fetus if possible, with written documentation showing the doctor made these offers.

But Hampton Delegate Jeion A. Ward (D-92) hopes to change all of that.

Her bill, HB 43, aims to strike the language from the 2012 bill from the state code all together.

Read the bill with Ward’s edits here.

Attempts to repeal this law in the past have failed, with a senate version of a similar bill, submitted by Sen. Mamie E. Locke (D-2) last year, hitting a wall in the Republican controlled Education and Health committee.

“First trimester ultrasounds are not part of routine prenatal care,” wrote Robyn Carlisle, a full-scope midwife at University Doctors and Kennedy University Hospital in Sewell, N.J., about Virginia’s ultrasound law shortly after it passed.

Carlisle believes these laws are often passed to humiliate women ahead of an already traumatic procedure, and they often only worsen the proc. “Requiring unnecessary ultrasounds add[s] to the pain women experience when making an already difficult decision, but will most likely not change the decision once it has been made.”

Advocates of the law say the procedure is medically necessary, and is a practice already undertaken in women’s health clinics around the country.

“The bill is aimed at protecting the health and welfare of women. It does not place a substantial obstacle in the path of women. It does not prevent women from obtaining abortions,” wrote Mailee Smith, Staff Counsel for the anti-abortion group Americans United for Life. “In fact, it is the “gold standard” of the abortion industry to perform an ultrasound before each and every abortion, even in the first trimester.”

According to Jen Russo, MD, MPH, in an article debating the need for pre-abortion ultrasounds in the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics blog, the procedure is commonplace (or was prior to being legally required), but “not medically necessary and can add to the cost of the abortion procedure.”

As for government interference in how doctors handle patients, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released a statement in May 2013 saying any such legislation is “ill advised”

“Such laws preclude physicians from offering the best evidence-based care to their patients,” read the statement, listing pre-abortion ultrasound laws along side mandates for outdated treatment protocol for medical abortions, and bills prohibiting doctors from speaking to their patients about firearms and gun safety as “contrary to current evidence-based scientific data and medical consensus.”

“Even if the law or regulation is generally consistent with the clinical standard of care at the time of enactment, medical treatment protocols written into law are problematic,” the doctor groups said.

Del. Ward was unavailable for comment by press time, but RVAMag will be following this bill as it moves through the upcoming GA this January.