Ultrasounds Before Abortions Aren't 'Sinister'

Kathleen Parker agrees with Bill Clinton that abortions should be "safe, legal, and rare." Toward the latter point, she comes down in favor of the recent spate of laws requiring women who are considering abortion to get an ultrasound and at least listen to a description of it. "I can't muster outrage over what can be viewed as both medically pragmatic and morally defensible," she writes in her Washington Post column.

Thanks to those ubiquitous protester signs, "we know what abortion looks like," she writes. "Shouldn't pregnant women also know what their healthy fetuses look like before they hit delete?" It's not a "sinister" question, she says. "As an advocate for informed choice, I can't rationalize ignorance or denial as preferable options for women in need of sound counseling. Or for a nation that wants to make abortion rare." (More abortion debate stories.)