Posted on 06/22/2009 9:25:22 AM PDT by raybbr
HARTFORD - Crystal Streit is a first-time mother two months into her pregnancy when her husband left for Iraq. The 25-year-old Milford woman wasn't even showing yet at the beginning of Brian Streit's Marine deployment.
But a budding, yet controversial, business sector that produces photos and videos of commercial fetal ultrasounds allowed the young father to see his daughter for the first time via the Internet, despite the thousands of miles that keep the couple separate.
"I was wanting him to see it more than anything. He said it made him very homesick," she said.
"It's not easy, because it's like, I'm pregnant. It's this huge thing in our life," Streit said. "I get very lonely. I'm here with my mom, but it's not the same. But it's his job and I knew that when I married him, so this is something I could do for him."
High-tech ultrasound boutiques that offer parents-to-be the ability to see their baby in the womb are gaining popularity throughout the country. At the same time, the practice seems to be raising alarm within the medical community because of the potential for harm to the mother and the fetus.
In Connecticut, legislators are on the verge of banning ultrasounds unless they are approved by a doctor for medical or diagnostic purposes. Senate lawmakers passed the new law unanimously on May 29 in response to a small but growing number of businesses offering commercial "keepsake" ultrasounds and videos. There are currently three in the state.
(Excerpt) Read more at courant.com ...
Check out her responses to the "The Political Courage Test?" on abortion.
Anyone else see the hypocrisy?
blatant political hypocrisy alert.
Abortions are a lot more dangerous than ultrasounds.
This absurd legislation is intended to shut down pro-life abortion alternative centers. It’s all about maximizing the number of abortions in CT.
Until they can show that Ultrasounds once or twice during a pregnancy are actually harmful, this is silly.
Nice understatement. :O)
Huh? How do you come to THAT conclusion? What a leap directly into the abyss. Ultrasound is dangerous to the baby inside and if you have ever had one you will notice that the baby continuously tries to move away from the sonic head
This is to prevent pro-life groups from offering ultrasounds. Many women decide to keep their baby after the see it in the ultrasound image, and pro-life groups have raised a lot of money to buy ultrasound machines and set them up in areas where there are high rates of abortion.
They can be harmful if not used by someone who knows what they are doing. But, yeah this seems like there is an underlying objective at work here...
I know that a fish finder can be uncomfortable if you get to close to it when you are in the water so I would assume the same is true for an ultrasound...
10 babies. I hadn’t noticed our babies moving during ultrasounds. I remember with two of ours that we tried to get movement so that we could see whether we were having girl or boy, but it didn’t work. I also don’t remember the doctors warning that ultrasounds are dangerous and that harm could come to our babies. Not even with the third or fourth ultrasounds in a pregnancy.
...I think that people who order "extra" ultrasounds (beyond what's typical) are foolish. Unless there's a medical reason for the procedure, I'm of the opinion that the kid (and the mother) doesn't need to get poked at any more than necessary.
I just know the one ultra sound we had done before our daughter was born made her scoot away as fast as possible. I asked my Ob about that and he allowed as how while he did unltrasounds he wasn’t real fond of them. He said they tended to be done too early and too often during the pregnancy. We don’t have a lot of history with these devices but I do not an increase in autism cases with the increases use of ultrasound ——is that casal? Have no idea I just know that the increase is there
At a 1982 World Health Organization (WHO) meeting sponsored by the International Radiation Protection Association (IRPA) and other organizations, an international group of experts reported that “[t]here are several frequently quoted studies that claim to show that exposure to ultrasound in utero does not cause any significant abnormalities in the offspring. …However, these studies can be criticized on several grounds, including the lack of a control population and/or inadequate sample size, and exposure after the period of major organogenesis; this invalidates their conclusions….”(4)
Early studies showed that subtle effects of neurological damage linked to ultrasound were implicated by an increased incidence in left-handedness in boys (a marker for brain problems when not hereditary) and speech delays.(5) Then in August 2006, Pasko Rakic, chair of Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Neurobiology, announced the results of a study in which pregnant mice underwent various durations of ultrasound.(6) The brains of the offspring showed damage consistent with that found in the brains of people with autism. The research, funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, also implicated ultrasound in neurodevelopmental problems in children, such as dyslexia, epilepsy, mental retardation and schizophrenia, and showed that damage to brain cells increased with longer exposures.(7)
Just one example. Read the informed consent documents AND do a little med library research. Some Obs don’t think that you will understand all of information so they sugar coat. Others don’t understand it themselves
Libs get weirder by the minute.
Anybody know what, if ANY, risks there are to the use of sound waves on the fetus or the mother?
Of course, they are pretending this is to shut down companies who are selling pictures of babies, but it is really targeted at stopping women's health clinics from doing ultrasounds to convince women not to kill their babies. Ultrasounds have made a big dent in the abortion industry, and in the acceptability of abortion in the public.
OK, I see that others have posted the risks. I’ll admit my children are older, so these recent studies were not available when we had ultrasounds. And we did ultrasounds because of medical reasons, not just for the fun of it.
Of course, if the woman is thinking about aborting a baby, there’s really no harm in doing an ultrasound.
It would seem to me, that as common as ultrasounds have become they would know one way or the other by now. I never had one, they didn’t do them routinely back then, but I would have loved to have had one.
I did get to be in a study about fetal monitors (I think the results were that there were more interventions on mothers with monitors, and I think the upshot was there were probably more unnecessary interventions).
Interesting. Thanks for the info.
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