In an apparent "end-run" around an Israeli legislative committee, Israeli Deputy Health Minister Shlomo Benizri is distributing pamphlets containing ultasound images of unborn children to pregnant women applying for permission for an abortion. Ha'aretz reports that Benizri, "a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party," moved to "require every woman seeking an abortion to view ultrasound images of her own embryo," but the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women opposed the plan.
Ha'aretz reports that the "physician in charge of the committees that hear abortion requests ... learned about the pamphlet's existence after it was already printed."
Benizri said, "What's wrong with these photographs? I would even add more of them. A woman who wants [an abortion] has to know that she is not removing some alien or some silkworm from there. Let her see what she is putting to death" (Sinai, Ha'aretz, 12/21).