Category: Pro-Choicers on Abortion Pictures

Pro-choice author Lisa M Mitchell writes:

“Some American lawmakers have attempted to legislate mandatory viewing of ultrasound fetal images as a means of dissuading pregnant women from having an abortion…

A growing number of feminist perspectives on this issue assert “a woman’s right to choose,” yet also reveal how the very existence of technologies such as ultrasound tend to structure “choice” in ways that “have increased the potential for others to exercise an even greater control over women’s lives” and to discriminate in particular against low income and minority women and people with disabilities.”

Lisa M Mitchell Baby’s First Picture: Ultrasound and the Politics of Fetal Subjects (Toronto: University of Toronto Press Inc., 2001) 6-7

The quote within the quote is from:

Michelle Stanworth Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and Medicine (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987) 4

Mitchell never reveals how the use of ultrasound allows pro-lifers to discriminate against people. In reality, ultrasound screening allows doctors to abort disabled babies in the womb – but this is not what Mitchell is talking about, of course.

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Pro-choice author Rickie Solinger, referring to the fact that the National Right to Life Committee was founded in 1974:

“… By this time, fetal imaging was a routine practice. Being able to “see” and ascribe personhood to the fetus stimulated antiabortion activism.”

Rickie Solinger Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 16

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Pro-choice author Johanna Schoen wrote:

“If many viewed abortion in the 1970s as central to women’s emancipation and a right that women should have, this view began to change in the 1980s as the proliferation of fetal images began to contribute to a reshaping of the public understanding of the fetus.

As fetal images gained in prominence, antiabortion activists began to articulate fetal interests and rights and to advance the notion that a fetus might have interests that stand in opposition to the interests of the woman carrying the fetus.”

Johanna Schoen Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University Of North Carolina Press, 2015) 15

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Pro-choice writer Lisa M Mitchell complains about how ultrasounds reveal preborn babies:

“Struggles over the meanings of personhood have implications for other persons, and I’m interested in the ramifications of “seeing” into women and “seeing” particular fetuses…

To what extent is [ultrasound] disempowering, subjecting women, fetuses, men, and sonographers to a normalizing gaze?…

What has been the evidentiary status of fetal images in the struggle over abortion rights?”

Lisa M Mitchell Baby’s First Picture: Ultrasound and the Politics of Fetal Subjects (Toronto: University of Toronto Press Inc., 2001) 12

Mitchell is so out of touch that she puts the word “seeing” in quotes, as if she can’t quite accept that we can actually see a preborn baby.

One wonders how many women, going in for an ultrasound and seeing their baby on the screen, feel that the ultrasound was “disempowering.”

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Pro-choice author Lisa M Mitchell writes:

“For some parents, the ability to see fetal parts [in the ultrasound] – especially the beating heart – and to see the fetus sucking its thumb, kicking, excreting, and responding to external stimuli may demonstrate that the fetus is aware of its surroundings and has the potential for or actually possesses distinctive human consciousness and personhood.”

Lisa M Mitchell Baby’s First Picture: Ultrasound and the Politics of Fetal Subjects (Toronto: University of Toronto Press Inc., 2001) 6

Mitchell laments this fact throughout the book.

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Irish pro-abortion activist Ursula Barry wrote:

“It is worth posing the question of whether the widespread use and normalizing of foetal imaging, made possible by scanning technology, has in practice fed into the ideology of foetal rights?

Taken together, the combined impact of the development of imagery is closely linked to the strength of foetal rights ideology.… In an important sense, technology has been used to bolster the case for regarding the foetus as independent of the mother.”

Ursula Barry “Discourses on Foetal Rights and Women’s Embodiment” Aideena Quilty, Sinead Kennedy and Catherine Conlon The Abortion Papers Ireland: Volume 2  (Togher, Cork: Attic Press, 2015) 122

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In his book about abortion, Gene Burns wrote:

“Even those who do not accept that babies are killed during abortions know that, politically, graphic images of fetuses that bring to mind babies are the Achilles’ heel of attempts to liberalize abortion laws. To the extent that there is discomfort with abortion among the general population, concerns about the relationship of abortion to babies is clearly the reason.”

Gene Burns The Moral Veto: Framing Contraception, Abortion, and Cultural Pluralism in the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 24

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In her pro-choice book, Sarah Weddington, who argued Roe V Wade before the Supreme Court, complained about pro-lifers using photographs of aborted babies. She claims that pro-choicers had photographs of women who died after illegal abortions but chose not to use them. Weddington says:

“We expected the antiabortionists to use grotesque and misleading photographs; they usually did. Some on our side felt we should show graphically the problems that resulted when abortion was illegal. Others argued that we would be sinking to the level of the opposition – a level we disdained – if we did the same. We decided to use reason instead of the pictures.”

Sarah Weddington A Question of Choice (New York: The Feminist Press, 2013 ed.) 86

Setting aside the question of how a photograph depicting reality can be misleading, if the pictures are so “grotesque”, it only means that abortion itself is grotesque. The pictures are an accurate representation of what happens in an abortion. If she thinks the pictures are grotesque, she thinks that abortion is grotesque. But she still supports it.

See some of the pictures of aborted babies

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A  pro-abortion writer wrote the following in Time magazine:

“The antiabortion cause has been aided by scientific advances that have complicated American attitudes about abortion. Prenatal ultrasound, which has allowed the general public to see fetuses inside the womb and understand that they have a human shape beginning around eight weeks into pregnancy, became widespread in the 1980s, and some babies born as early as 24 weeks can now survive.”

Kate Pickert “What Choice? Abortion-rights activists won an epic victory in Roe v. Wade. They’ve been losing ever since” Time Jan. 14, 2013

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Pro-Choice columnist William Saletan wrote:

“Pro-lifers are often caricatured as stupid creationists who just want to put women back in their place. Science and free inquiry are supposed to help them get over their “love affair with the fetus.”

But science hasn’t cooperated. Ultrasound has exposed the life in the womb to those of us who didn’t want to see what abortion kills. The fetus is squirming, and so are we.”

On laws requiring ultrasound before abortion:

“Critics complain that these bills seek to “bias,” “coerce,” and “guilt-trip” women. Come on. Women aren’t too weak to face the truth.

If you don’t want to look at the video, you don’t have to. But you should look at it, and so should the guy who got you pregnant, because the decision you’re about to make is as grave as it gets…

Come on. Women aren’t too weak to face the truth. …

Are ultrasound pushers trying to bias your decision? Of course. But of all the things they do to “inform” your decision, this is the least twisted…

The image on the monitor may look like a blob, a baby, or neither. It certainly won’t follow some senator’s script. All it will show you is the truth.”

William Saletan “Sex, Life, and Videotape” Slate APRIL 28 2007

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