What's up with this?

This is odd.

The doctors who treat pregnant women are warning mothers-to-be against using “entertainment” ultrasounds solely to determine the sex of their fetuses.

The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, along with the Canadian Association of Radiologists, put out a new joint policy statement this week calling for an end to ultrasounds offered by non-medical clinics.

Here's the joint statement.

An excerpt:

Fetal ultrasound is a valuable tool in modern obstetrical care. This imaging technique is useful in assessing a fetus for anomalies, ensuring fetal health, and assessing fetal growth and development if performed by properly trained individuals in a carefully monitored and medically supervised environment. It is also an important technology in education and research. This imaging technology uses high-frequency, low-energy sound waves; it does not use ionizing radiation. The availability of ultrasound machines for purchase and use for non-clinical purposes has led to a proliferation of “entertainment” ultrasound units throughout Canada. With recent media coverage of nonmedical clinics performing gender determination in the first trimester, the SOGC and CAR find it necessary to update their previous policy statements on this issue and to issue a new joint policy statement.

The key phrases here are "for non-clinical purposes" and "entertainment." Health Canada and US FDA have warned against them for years -- in the FDA's case, since 2004. And at least one US state, Connecticut, has banned them.

But the issue has been safety concerns posed by multiple, longer-exposure ultrasounds.

What's odd here is the insertion of the sex-selection canard.

Here is the National Post offering a a piece with a totally misleading headline yet not a scrap of evidence that "sex-based abortions" are occurring in Canada, let alone that there's a "rise" in them. Here's the headline:

Rise in sex-based abortions prompts doctors to call for end to ultrasounds that only determine gender of fetus

It refers to an editorial in the Canadian Medical Journal from 2012. That editorial was occasioned by a study of gender ratios downloadable here free without subscription.

Researchers looked at Ontario birth records for the period 2002 to 2007, correlated to the woman's country of birth.

It includes a table with the actual numbers of male/female births to women of various origins and for each birth (first, second and third) in turn. An abortion provider I know took a good look at these numbers and found that there were only two statistically significant differences in gender ratios.

One involved third births to women of Indian origin, and the other second births to women of Korean origin; in both groups there was a small disproportion of males.

Then, calculations were done to determine how many "extra" males were born.

There were 48,362 third births of females. If the usual ratio of 1.05 had applied, one would have expected 50,780 male births, when in fact there were 51,520.  It was as though 360 births that “should” have been female were male instead.  But this amounts to only 60 extra male births per year in Ontario, 360 out of the 6-year total of 766,688 births – at .05% not much of a demographic threat!

(These quotes come from private correspondence, but you can download the study and do the math yourself.)

As we have argued here many times, sex selection is a serious problem in societies where it is widely practiced. That one study shows only that it might have happened in Ontario with very little effect on the larger population.

In fact, there's good evidence that when the overall population is questioned on gender preference, girls win.

That's why we call sex-selective abortion a canard. Or in Mark Warawa's recent anti-abortion gambit, sheer, cynical posturing, aka Warawa's Wank.

And speaking of Warawa, NatPo's resident sob-sister Kelly McParland produces his usual disingenuous froth to claim that the joint statement vindicates Warawa's thwarted motion.

Which of course it doesn't. Warawa's Wank was simply yet another back-door attempt to reopen the abortion debate. And all sensible people recognized it as such immediately.

But the question remains. Why would the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada and Canadian Association of Radiologist link multiple, non-medical ultrasounds -- long frowned on by reputable experts -- to very sketchy evidence that sex-selective abortion is actually occurring in Canada?

Why now? What's going on?

We ever-vigilant proponents and protectors of women's rights in Canada should keep our eyes peeled for future moves and spin by fetus fetishists.

UPDATE: Dominionist-run website, We Need a Law, is revved in anticipation of a new bill.

Taking on Sex-Selective Abortion

Indian women take on the sex-selective abortion issue.

Mumbai (AsiaNews/Agencies) - About 225 women, members of the first all-female village council (gram sabha) of Haryana, have decided to set up vigilance committees to stop selective abortions and female feoticides. According to their proposal, each of the 14 districts of the village of Bibipur (Jind district) will have its own committee, made up of three women and one man with the task of monitoring and controlling pregnant women. The move is significant because Haryana is one of the Indian states in which the practice of gender selection is most widespread.

The women made their proposal in the presence of the sarpanch (village head), Sunil Jaglan, who gave full approval to the project. "From this moment", he explained, "the anganwadi (a sort of health worker, ed.) must record every woman in the second month of pregnancy. Up to now, the state, by law, already records pregnant women from the fourth month. Our hope is that lowering the limit will serve as a deterrent, and that other villages will follow our example."

A woman named Birmati explains that the gender test costs 5,000 rupees (70 euros) and the same again for an abortion. She suggests:

If the same money were instead deposited into a fixed deposit at the birth of the baby, the family would not need to worry about her future. When she grows up, the bank can provide them with sufficient financial support for her studies and for a good marriage.

In Canada, an editorial in the Calgary Herald is calling for an end to 'entertainment' ultrasounds.

An ultrasound is a medical procedure, not a party trick. Its long-term effects remain unknown and Health Canada warns about possible risk for a woman and her baby. Health Canada recommends "diagnostic fetal ultrasounds should be done only when the expected medical benefits out-weigh any foreseeable risk." That's a sensible rule for any pregnant woman.

Here at DJ! we've covered the weird fascination fetus fetishists have with ultrasound several times. They believe that forcing women to look at pulsing images of their innards will dissuade them from abortion.

To that end, the Knights of Columbus have a program to raise funds to buy equipment specifically for fake clinics.

Multiple ultrasounds are a relatively recent phenomenon. Back in the day, there were few machines and they were reserved for high-risk pregnancies. Even now, current guidelines recommend two ultrasounds per uncomplicated pregnancy.

So, while prochoice people are generally not in favour of pregnancy regulation, I personally wouldn't have a problem with outlawing non-medically necessary ultrasounds. Especially if that included non-medically necessary but coercive and manipulative ultrasounds offered by the fake clinics.

Of course, regulating non-medical ultrasounds -- it's done in several Excited States -- is not the whole answer to sex-selective abortion. Women, whether on their own or pressured by family and cultural expectations, will seek and no doubt find ultrasound operators willing to risk whatever sanctions for a few bucks.

More important is elevating the value of women in the benighted communities where this goes on. Maybe the community teams and a very practical idea like Birmati's could go some way towards altering people's perceptions of women.

Fetus Focus Week on CBC

First we start with Michael Enright 'meditating' on abortion.

Then this morning, on the hour and half-hour news cycle on CBC Radio 1, we hear self-selective abortions could be on the rise!!! Yup, fetal gender testing discovered by CBC crack investigative reporting team SHRIEKKK!

And just to ramp up the shrieking, a quick interview with the doctor responsible for a male to female birth ratio study at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.

"Our findings raise questions about why there are more male liveborns than female liveborns among Indian couples who have had two or more previous babies," states Dr. Joel Ray, St. Michael’s Hospital and University of Toronto. 

All this is followed by a half hour devoted to fetus genome mapping on The Current.

Makes me wonder about the new Code of Conduct for CBC staff.

LOLFetus

From Gawker:

The abortion debate has devolved to the zygote version of a LOLCat. A lady got an ultrasound, and her unborn child looked like it was smiling. Thus, "a baby can experience feelings such as happiness" earlier than previously thought.

(I'm not putting a copy of the thing here. You can view it at the Gawker link or at the UK rag, Daily Mail, where it originally appeared.)

Professor Stuart Campbell, who took the picture at his London clinic with 3-D and 4-D scanning equipment, said it did not necessarily show the unborn child had feelings - but it was certainly displaying human behaviour.

Well, FFS, what other species' behaviour should it be displaying? That fetus fetishists' vehemently made argument -- abortion is wrong because a fetus is human -- infuriates me. We pro-choicers never contend that a fetus is non-human. Of course it's human. What it is is a non-person.

Let's hear some more from the good professor:

'This is a joyful expression of the humanity of the foetus. I have seen a foetus making a crying face at around 18 or 19 weeks, but not a nice smile.

'This is the earliest on record - it is just a delight.'

Oh, gag me.

Go have a look at the thing. It is not a delight. It's creepy and weird-looking and -- as one commenter at Gawker pointed out -- it appears to be making a peace-sign. Are fetuses capable of complex moral reasoning as well?

This would be merely weird and creepy, but it happened in the UK, where in 2008 there was a heated debate in Parliament about lowering the abortion limit of 24 weeks' gestation to 22 or even fewer. (The motion lost and the limit is still 24 weeks.)

This will surely rev up the Brit chapter of Fetus Fetishists International.

And it will no doubt have an impact in the gun-lovin'-abortion-hatin' Excited States, where lawmakers in Nebraska banned abortions after 20 weeks, based on faulty science that claimed fetuses can feel pain after that point. The ff'ing lawmakers ignored all kinds of sciencey-facty-neurologicky testimony to inflict yet another blow on women's rights for spurious reasons.

I can't wait to read what SUZY ALLCAPSLOCK makes of it. 'i'm in ur uterus, smiling for the camera?'

'Soaring' Fetal Ultrasounds: Fetus Fetishist Wet Dream or Nightmare? (edited to remove childish redirects)

Fetal ultrasounds 'soaring':

The number of pregnant women having four or more ultrasounds during their pregnancies has nearly tripled in a decade, according to a study from McMaster University.

From 1996 to 2006 the number of pregnant women in Ontario who had four or more ultrasounds climbed from 8,500 to 25,000.

In that same period, the number of births dropped.

The study included data from 1.4 million singleton pregnancies that occurred between 1996 and 2006.

In that period, there were 3.57 million ultrasounds conducted, said lead investigator Dr. John You, assistant professor of Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University. The study was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

You said the study relied on data from OHIP billing claims, which did not include any confidential information, so investigators do not know the reason for the increase.

But he said some believe there’s an “entertainment value” to ultrasounds, especially in the 3-D format.

Current guidelines recommend only two ultrasounds for uncomplicated pregnancies.

From the above link:

A single ultrasound costs about $65. Nearly 3.6 million scans were done in Ontario over the 10-year study period, totalling an estimated $232 million.

"We're not arguing at all that ultrasounds are being overused in complicated, high-risk situations where there's pretty clear benefit from it," You said. "But, we're seeing lots of people getting four, five, six ultrasounds" for uncomplicated pregnancies.

Some studies have suggested possible links between frequent ultrasounds and smaller birth size, or babies more likely to be left-handed, which isn't in itself a problem but researchers have wondered what effect frequent scans might be having on the fetal brain. But You stressed the links are "soft" and not at all proven.

"As far as we know, ultrasounds really are quite safe," he said. "But since we don't know 100 per cent for sure, there's little reason to do additional ultrasounds if there's not much that can be gained from it."

Fetal ultrasounds are viewed by the fetus fetishists as a great boon to their cause. (Except when they aren't, of course.) All over the Excited States, incrementalist anti-abortion zealots promote and pass laws to force women who want an abortion to view their own innards in the hopes that they will bond with the murky blob.

But ultrasound technology is advancing. Which is good from the point of view of detecting anomalies and defects, but bad from the point of view of 'entertainment' ultrasounds. The US FDA warned about multiple ultrasounds and the more intensive 3D version years ago. And recently Connecticut banned 'non-medical' or entertainment fetal ultrasounds.

We at DJ! (and previously at Birth Pangs) have pondered the fetus fetishists enthusiasm for ultrasound. Well, OK, yeah, they're fetishists so they want to look at the objects of their (weird) desire. But at the same time, ultrasound is not without risk, and since they're all about the fetus, how can they square the sanctity of the fetus with the risks incurred by their desire to watch it squirming around?

Here is Canada's numero uno fetus fetishist reacting to the McMaster study.

Women want their ultrasounds to see their babies. And while seeing the baby can be entertaining, I find the word "entertainment" trivializes the experience. Isn't there a better word? I'm not keen on "bonding" either-- the fetus isn't fully experiencing your presence.

Something smells about the issue of ultrasounds. Health Canada advises against keepsake ultrasounds, but they're very routine. I had seven in my last pregnancy (many for specific medical reasons).

Seven? Heavens. . .

And here HER commenters take her out the woodshed for her poor research on the issue.

To wit:

A 2006 study found that sustained exposure of mouse embryos to ultrasound waves caused a small but statistically significant number of neurons to fail to acquire their proper position during neuronal migration. It is highly unlikely that this result speaks directly to risks of fetal ultrasound as practiced in competent and responsible medical centers. There is no scientific evidence of an association between prenatal ultrasound exposure and autism, but there are very little data on human fetal exposure during diagnostic ultrasound, and the lack of recent epidemiological research and human data in the field has been called "appalling".

And:

The cause of autism has been pinned on everything from "emotionally remote" mothers (since discredited) to vaccines, genetics, immunological disorders, environmental toxins and maternal infections. Today most researchers theorize that autism is caused by a complex interplay of genetics and environmental triggers. A far simpler possibility worthy of investigation is the pervasive use of prenatal ultrasound, which can cause potentially dangerous thermal effects.

Oh heck, go look at the results of googling 'autism fetal ultrasound' yourself. The query netted over 500,000 hits.

Autism, like fetal ultrasounding, is also 'soaring' with many fingers pointed, none definitively.

Obviously, there needs to be more and better research.

In the meantime, wouldn't prudent pregnant women go with what is medically advised?

Edited March 10, 2010 to remove fetal pr0n redirects.