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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