An excerpt from an interesting story from the Toledo Blade...
Dr. Martin Ruddock has performed abortions in northern Ohio for more than 20 years, and he's thankful - on most days - for medical advances over those years.
When he started, ultrasound wasn't available. Today, he routinely uses ultrasound to guide his instruments, which means less pain for the woman, less blood loss, less infection, and fewer complications. Newer drugs also have cut down on pain during the procedure, and other new drugs decrease bleeding.
But Dr. Ruddock also worries that "technology is being misused too."
Abortion-rights opponents, he says, use ultrasound, but instead of using it as part of a medical procedure, they use the powerful, clear images to try to persuade women to not get an abortion. Lawmakers, seeing these images, have used them to push for legislation restricting abortion.
"The [new] ultrasound has been a big negative for us because the anti-choice people have co-opted it," he said.
And as infants are being kept alive at younger ages because of medical advances, politicians are bound to pick up on that, he said.
"They're trying to push back the line farther and farther toward conception," Dr. Ruddock said...
