Having an ultrasound is now considered rape, according to the latest talking points from the largest abortion chain in the nation, Planned Parenthood, over the controversy about the Virginia ultrasound bill.

If this sounds illogical and absurd, that’s because it is.

In a 2003 study of Planned Parenthood and other independently owned abortion facilities, 99 percent of these clinics admitted that they either “always” or “sometimes” perform an ultrasound in association with a surgical abortion. Further, it was stated that vaginal ultrasounds were “always” performed before the early surgical abortion at 83 percent of these sites, 16 percent “under certain conditions,” and only 1 percent “never” did them.

Additionally, the study revealed that after an abortion was performed, vaginal ultrasounds were also “always” performed at 26 percent of these sites, “under certain conditions” at 66 percent of these sites, and “never” at 8 percent.

Planned Parenthood even admits they do ultrasounds before an abortion: “That’s just the medical standard,” said Adrienne Schreiber, an official at Planned Parenthood’s Washington, D.C., regional office. “To confirm the gestational age of the pregnancy, before any procedure is done, you do an ultrasound.”

Requiring an ultrasound to take place before an abortion is performed makes sense since it ensures that the mother is actually pregnant, determines the age and size of the baby, and aids in determining the location of the unborn child for either the vacuum machine or a needle used to end its life, if in fact a surgical abortion is decided upon. And in many abortion procedures, ultrasounds are used during the surgical abortion to ensure that the abortionist doesn’t physically harm the mother while they dismember the unborn child.

Abortion clinics do ultrasounds, but many don’t tell women what’s on the screen — their living baby.

Pro-choice advocates — rather than asking questions about how to ensure that abortion is “safer” for mothers and whether or not women are fully informed about the development of their child before they make the most irrevocable decision in their lifetime — are resorting to disrespecting actual rape victims and utilizing silly scare tactics.

If a woman has decided to undergo a surgical abortion, this decision requires an abortionist to force instruments into her vagina in order to rid the woman of her child. Unfortunately that’s part of the package you get with abortion. How is this any less invasive than the ultrasound?

After decades of legal abortion and scientific studies done on when life begins and the age at which unborn babies feel pain, the pro-choice advocates and lobbyists still cling to outdated, untrue, and frankly ridiculous lies to convince women that abortion is not the taking of their child’s life.

It’s about time that women be told what abortion really is. Ultrasounds can make abortion “more emotionally difficult,” but is it really better to leave a mother uniformed that there is a little tiny human growing inside her? Are pro-choicers saying that women are too “emotionally weak” to handle the truth?

If performing a vaginal ultrasound is equal to the violence, invasiveness, and vulnerability of rape, then Planned Parenthood, which performs more than 200,000 abortions a year through procedures more invasive than a simple ultrasound, is without question the largest practitioner of rape in our country. Why isn’t anyone rushing to arrest Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood’s proud president, for raping millions of women and then profiting billions of dollars from it?

— Kristan Hawkins is the executive director of Students for Life of America.