Texas Faith: Should women be required to have a sonogram before undergoing an abortion?

In Texas, state legislators are wrangling over legislation that would require doctors to perform a sonogram on a woman seeking an abortion. There are various technical differences between the House and Senate versions of this legislation, but neither bill would explicitly require a woman to look at the sonogram.

Naturally, this proposal has sparked considerable debate. Some say that we should take extra steps to protect life, even if it means requiring a sonogram, which reports in this newspaper suggest are done by abortion providers in nearly all cases. Others see this as an infringement on the liberties of the woman in question. They also argue that the bill is aimed at humiliating women.

 William McKenzie of Dallas Morning News poses the questions. "Is requiring a woman to have a sonogram before having an abortion the correct move or an incorrect one? Please explain your reasons " How do you see this?

This is a weekly column from Dallas Morning News, 12 opinions are presented at this link  http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/03/texas-faith-do-you-approve-of.html

MIKE GHOUSE, President, Foundation for Pluralism, Dallas

 Life is about choices; you bear the emotional, physical and spiritual burden for the wrong choices you make or enjoy the life with least conflicts. Humans are the only species equipped with a device called conscience that monitors the mechanism of releasing pain or pleasure to the individual based on the choices he or she makes.

Conscience is a dynamic term constantly expanding its range of acceptability from what the societies set up as a benchmark to the free choices one wants to exercise.

Women have come a long way in regaining their freedom to choose from the patriarchal societies where men had set their boundaries on the issue of abortion. Even today in pockets of China, India and several societies, female infanticide is carried on without apparent remorse, whereas aborting a child in religious societies particularly among Muslims, Catholics and other denominations is strictly forbidden.

There is a revolutionary as well as an evolutionary process of benchmarking the conscience. Some 1400 years ago female infanticide was a common place in the Middle East and Prophet Muhammad turned that around in his life time, calling the female child as God's blessing, the Catholic Church had pioneered that position and Mahatma Gandhi used a similar approach in terming the hitherto 'untouchables' as God's chosen people, those were revolutionary changes.

As Americans we have set ourselves on the evolutionary path of consensus building, and benchmarking the conscience has been a struggle for us and the issue of abortion remains in the domain of civil societies. We value life regardless of where we stand on abortion and sonogram is one more effort to ask the carrier of fetus to reconsider her choice to be absolutely certain that she is not aborting a life consciously; the pains of carrying through may outweigh the pain of aborting.

Although we are a religiously dominated society, our governance is not. We need to guard ourselves in making decisions based on the needs of today over the burdens of temptations of imposing majority views on those who differ. We need to do a fresh study on abortion remorse and not rush through this, let's evolve and let's not lose our basic human value; choice.

This is a weekly column from Dallas Morning News, 12 opinions are presented at http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/03/texas-faith-do-you-approve-of.html