Ultrasound

Here's a question that's not being asked in the health-care debate: How much medical care do we want in our lives? It's something we should be discussing. Start with the two life events we all experience, birth and death. Doctors have gotten pretty good at terrifying (and operating on) pregnant women during what should be one of their greatest experiences. And we are equally proficient at dragging the elderly through all sorts of misery on the road to death. Too harsh, you say?

The rain forced Janaya Moscony to slow her usual breakneck pace as she drove her black Audi convertible to Paoli Hospital. She was nervous about the big needle they would stick in her belly for the amniocentesis. What if it hit the baby? Was it worth taking a chance, even a small one? But she was 35, an age that technically made the pregnancy "high risk. " So she had taken a few hours off that Tuesday morning last September to get the test, just to be sure everything was OK. Her financial clients could wait.

The rain forced Janaya Moscony to slow her usual breakneck pace as she drove her black Audi convertible to Paoli Hospital. She was nervous about the big needle they would stick in her belly for the amniocentesis. What if it hit the baby? Was it worth taking a chance, even a small one? But she was 35, an age that technically made the pregnancy "high risk. " So she had taken a few hours off that Tuesday morning last September to get the test, just to be sure everything was OK. Her financial clients could wait.

Ruby Spencer has a tumor so large that it makes the slender, 61-year-old widow look, in her words, "five months pregnant. " The "abdominal pelvic complex cystic mass," as the ultrasound report calls it, measures 32 to 35 centimeters - the size of a football - and may be malignant. Everyone she has seen sent her somewhere else. The emergency room at Temple University Hospital referred her to a city clinic and back to a state welfare office and then sent her home. She had no insurance.

Ruby Spencer has a tumor so large that it makes the slender, 61-year-old widow look, in her words, "five months pregnant. " The "abdominal pelvic complex cystic mass," as the ultrasound report calls it, measures 32 to 35 centimeters - the size of a football - and may be malignant. Everyone she has seen sent her somewhere else. The emergency room at Temple University Hospital referred her to a city clinic and back to a state welfare office and then sent her home. She had no insurance.

Must hide some truth Mark Bowden ("Guarding Secrets, Exposing Secrets," June 25) is right to defend journalists who report government misfeasance and malfeasance, even though it embarrasses the responsible politicians. But he stretches the reporter's duty to report "the truth" way past the breaking point by arguing that it includes the right to disclose secret information that puts our military in real danger. Telling us that our government is running a secret prison system or bypassing the courts to spy on us surely embarrasses our commander-in-chief, but it does not put our military at risk.

Through a fog of sedation and painkillers, Alina Columbus heard a voice say, "We're going to start another treatment. " She lay on her stomach in the magnetic resonance imaging machine, hearing a rumbling and feeling heat build up deep inside her. High-intensity ultrasound waves were passing through her abdomen, reaching a fibrous tumor in her uterus, and raising the temperature ...

ACTRESS Ashley Judd went to Washington a week ago wearing a crucifix and a trendy little T-shirt that boasted: "THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE. " AP snapped a photo of Ashley, honored guest of the "March for Women's Lives," that has been widely disseminated. Pro-abortion leaders must be ecstatic. In a sea of angry (Hillary Rodham Clinton), haggard (Cybill Shepherd) and ghoulish (Whoopi Goldberg) women shaking their fists and waving coat hangers, Ashley's pretty smile helped put a softer, gentler and more glamorous spin on the morbid march for "reproductive rights.