Earlier this year, Live Action released a series of videos featuring information about Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion corporation. The videos took the claims Planned Parenthood and its political allies have made about its non-abortion services and debunked them, piece by piece. Part of that investigation revealed that Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide ultrasounds to women unless those women have decided to abort.
Numerous phone calls to various Planned Parenthood locations confirmed this, along with testimony from former Planned Parenthood staffers. But when looking at Planned Parenthood’s website, a pregnant woman seeking care would never know that this is the policy.
As of August 1, 2017, Planned Parenthood’s website casually mentions that one can obtain an ultrasound at Planned Parenthood “for free or low-cost… whether or not you have insurance.”
The page also claims that “[y]our doctor might also be able to help you find affordable ultrasounds in your area.” If this statement is claiming the doctors or staff at Planned Parenthood might help in this endeavor, women are being misled. When Live Action’s undercover callers asked about ultrasounds and other services for their pregnancies — but didn’t want abortions — they were told by Planned Parenthood staff to “just Google it.”
If Planned Parenthood’s web page seems too good to be true, that’s because it is. Even the pro-abortion ThinkProgress admitted that Planned Parenthood does not provide free ultrasounds, which is why they were excluded from the Idaho health department’s list of resources for free ultrasounds.
Nowhere on the web page is it mentioned that Planned Parenthood doesn’t actually provide ultrasounds unless a woman is getting an abortion. As for the ultrasound being free — again, it isn’t free if a woman has to pay for an abortion to get one.
And what, exactly, does Planned Parenthood mean when its staff say they offer ultrasounds? If a woman goes in for an abortion, it’s highly unlikely that she would even be given the opportunity to view her own ultrasound — or if she does, it may very well be a still photo of her ultrasound, not a real-time ultrasound of her baby, showing her child’s movements and heartbeat. And these aren’t just assumptions. Planned Parenthood managers and staff have spoken up about the practices that don’t truly inform a woman seeking to know more about her pregnancy and the child in her womb.
Planned Parenthood once also touted prenatal care on its website. Yet this service has long been in decline at the organization. After another Live Action investigation revealed that the claims of extensively available prenatal care were a lie, Planned Parenthood scrubbed the deceptive mention of “prenatal care” from several facilities on its websites. (Should we hold our breath to see if they do the same with their ultrasound claim?)
One would never know from the web page that Planned Parenthood actually fights informed consent laws, including ones that require that women be given the opportunity to view the ultrasound images of their preborn children prior to abortion. One would also never know that Planned Parenthood and its allies have called transvaginal ultrasound “rape” and have opposed state bills mandating that ultrasounds be done prior to abortion — even though on the web page pictured above, Planned Parenthood refers to ultrasound as “a safe and painless way to see inside your body.” Planned Parenthood has even called ultrasounds “terrorizing,” despite admitting that ultrasounds are “standard procedure” before abortions.
Again, under “How does an ultrasound work?” in the image above, Planned Parenthood reiterates that a transvaginal ultrasound is “not painful” and “feels like a regular vaginal exam that you might get during a well-woman visit” (which seems a far cry from what rape actually is). These ultrasounds are often done early in pregnancy (as are most abortions like the type described by Dr. Anthony Levatino in the video below). According to former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson, the facility uses these to see how far along the woman is in her pregnancy so they know how much to charge her for the abortion procedure.
So, for political purposes, Planned Parenthood tells the public that ultrasounds are “rape,” but when addressing patients, Planned Parenthood tells women that ultrasounds are painless. Which is it, Planned Parenthood?
Planned Parenthood’s ultrasound information web page is just one more example of the abortion organization’s deceptions that must be exposed, revealing that Planned Parenthood is far from the legitimate healthcare provider it claims to be.
