Knights donate ultrasound to pregnancy center

Friday, Feb. 10, 2017

PARK CITY — A 3D ultrasound machine donated by the Utah Knights of Columbus will help save lives, said Kelly Parrish, executive director of the Pregnancy Help Center in Park City, which received the equipment in December.

“I’m going to try not to cry,” Parrish said Feb. 2 during the open house event at which she thanked the fraternal Catholic organization for their donation.

The images taken by the ultrasound machine show a fetus’ heartbeat and other anatomical details, she said, adding that the body’s membranes are joined by laminine which, “if you look at it under a microscope, is in the shape of a cross. The shape of the glue that holds us all together is in the shape of a cross.” 

Quoting Colossians 1:16 (“… in him all things hold together…”), she added, “So when I look at these ultrasound images, I think about the laminine holding these little babies together. … This machine will allow us to present life to each client that sees their baby.” 

When a woman who is uncertain about whether to have an abortion sees an ultrasound image of her child, “they are 90 percent more likely to keep the baby,” Parrish said.

The Park City Pregnancy Resource Center supports women through pregnancy and afterward with free ultrasounds, parenting classes and material needs such as baby clothing. The center opened March; the ultrasound arrived in December. 

The donation of the ultrasound is a continuation of the “Culture of Life” work that the Utah Knights of Columbus has done in the state. In 2014, they donated a new ultrasound machine to the Pregnancy Resource Center in Salt Lake City; they also arranged for the old machine from there to be donated to The Care Center in Brigham City. In addition, the Knights in the Cedar City area contribute to free ultrasound exams for women in Iron County.

More than a third of the money for the Park City machine was raised at the state Knights convention in May, said John Wainscott, a past chairman of the Knights’ Pro-Life and Family committee who continues to help pregnancy centers get ultrasound machines. Additional fundraisers were held at various locations, with the last two at Saint Mary of the Assumption Parish in Park City, he said. The $16,800 raised locally was matched through the Culture of Life program at the Knights’ Supreme Council, which is funded by $2 of each Knight’s dues. 

Most women expect to see an ultrasound image of their child when they become pregnant, said Dr. La-Reine Sabella, an ob-gyn specialist who is affiliated with the Pregnancy Resource Center. In Park City, “we’re fortunate here that most everybody is pro-life,” but seeing an ultrasound “I think it makes it much harder for somebody to abort a pregnancy, especially if they’ve seen … the limbs moving,” she said. 

With the new machine, the detail is so fine that the fingers of an 8-week-old fetus can be counted, Sabella said, so “there’s no question that that’s a baby. It makes it very real.”