WASHINGTON

To be clear, these laws are not uncommon. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 20 states currently have a law either requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds or requiring that they offer to show the results to women if ultrasounds are performed. And in 2010, 21 states introduced ultrasound informed-consent bills.

But it was Virginia's law, enacted in February 2012, that took the national stage. And while each ultrasound law is unique, there was little in substance or content that distinguished Virginia's law from the many other similar state laws. What was new, however, were the rhetorical scare tactics employed by those advocating an abortion ideology, namely the invocation of the term "rape."

Opponents of this bill erroneously equated a transvaginal ultrasound with a "second rape" and in doing so successfully frightened many legislators. The reality is that the language "transvaginal ultrasound" was never included in the bill either in its initial form or in the later, amended form ultimately signed into law. Rather, the bill called for a woman to receive the "standard of care" as defined by the medical community.

The American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine defines the standard of care for ultrasonography. This includes offering either transabdominal or transvaginal ultrasound for the first trimester, explaining that "If a transabdominal is not definitive, a transvaginal scan should be performed whenever possible." Generally speaking, a transvaginal ultrasound is usually used for up to 11 weeks of a pregnancy, simply because until this time the embryo is small enough to need an internal view to capture it. Around 11 weeks the embryo is large enough that an abdominal ultrasound can capture a strong image, and so the standard then changes appropriately to abdominal ultrasound at this point.

Not unimportantly, a general practice by any medical practitioner is never to force a woman to have a transvaginal ultrasound (or any procedure) if she does not want it. In this case, the physician simply makes a note of the interaction to assure his attempt to provide medically accurate information and then provides an abdominal ultrasound.