Images of Embryos Used by Anti-Abortion Activists

The notions of autonomy and embryonic personhood can be visually represented. Images of embryos shown on anti-abortion websites have been chosen or modified to emphasize personhood and autonomy. These images have focused on a particular type of photograph:

First, these photographs show the outside of the embryo, not the inside. This gives the illusion of completeness. (The photograph on the cover of the textbook, Developmental Biology, for instance, shows the inside of the embryo and thus gives the feeling of becoming.)

Second, the embryos chosen are those week 7 and older. At week 7, the eyes come to the front of the face. The face does not look human until that point. Many websites and posters will use the week 7 embryo, since it is the youngest human-looking stage. This allows recognition and identification to occur. (The embryo on the cover of Developmental Biology is a 6-week embryo and the eyes are still on the lateral sides of the face.)

Third, the embryos are shown as being independent entities. The mother has been obliterated. There is often a black background behind the embryo, giving the false impression that it is independent. (In the cover image of Developmental Biology, the umbilical cord and placenta are retained.)

Fourth, older embryos are often shown in childlike positions such as thumb-sucking, to further the identification of the fetus with an independent child.

In many ways, the depiction of the early embryo in the black background looks like an alien astronaut at the control panels of an extraterrestrial spaceship.

Figure 1 (Click image to enlarge.)

Indeed, there is a tradition of seeing autonomous embryos or fetuses without the mother. Here is the well-known fetus from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Figure 2 (Click image to enlarge.)

The critique of the pictures is that such autonomy can be claimed only if the mother is rendered invisible. Taylor (1998) singles out Lennart Nilsson's photographs (first printed for a 1965 edition of Life and reprised and updated in a 1990 edition) of free-floating, miniature infants removed from their maternal context and available for public "consumption". Through the mass distribution of these images we can imagine the public fetus as "a universal abstraction, a representation of that which is supposed to be common to all fetuses."

Nilsson's photographs are indeed used for such purposes, and they constitute a major part of the public embryo. The next figure is from an anti-abortion website that positions itself as a teen self-esteem site. Note two things: First, the embryo is represented as being autonomous—floating freely. Second, the embryos are labeled as girls. That is to say, they are represented using the language of already born infants.

Figure 3 (Click image to enlarge.)

What is interesting is that Lennart Nilsson's actual book (from which these pictures came) is adamant in portraying the embryo and fetus as integrated into the woman's body and woman and woman's life. The photographs for magazines and various political and religious documents are political and religious choices. Let me give an example. Here is a well-known picture of an 18-week embryo. This image has been used to show the innocence and purity and childlike nature of the preborn baby, and it is used as such on the Actionlife.org website, a site that links non-personhood for Canadian women in 1900 and non-personhood for German Jews in 1940, with non-personhood for embryos in 2000.

Figure 4 (Click image to enlarge.)

Now let's look at the context that it is in:

Figure 5 (Click image to enlarge.)

You can see that the embryo has not only been put back into the context of the pregnant woman, it is also put back into the context of the pregnant woman's life. The woman has a belly swollen with the developing fetus, and is trying to get up out of bed (while her husband sleeps blissfully nearby).

Figure 6 shows another picture of a 6-7 week embryo. Given that this embryo is shown in the literal context of manipulation, this picture is widely disseminated on the antiabortion websites. Interestingly, the image is not from an elective abortion. Rather, it's from an ectopic pregnancy that can never come to term. In fact, such a pregnancy could kill the mother. Even so, most sites (such as www.epigee.org and www.gravityteen.com) label it as a "tiny unborn child" or a "preborn baby".

Figure 6 (Click image to enlarge.)

Following the path of Foucault (1973), Harrison (1982; quoted in Petchesky, 2000) looks at the images as critical to the importance of the fetus. In vivid language, Harrison remarks,

The fetus could not be taken seriously as long as he remained a medical recluse in an opaque womb; and it was not until the last half of this century that the prying eye of the ultrasound (that is, ultrasound visualization) rendered the once opaque womb transparent, stripping the veil of mystery from the dark inner sanctum, and letting the light of scientific observation fall on the shy and secretive fetus.

This passage is quoted by both Hartouni (1997) and Petchesky (2000) as the beginnings of their respective analyses. Petchesky has noted that the public embryo is represented as a pre-baby. For anti-abortionists, the embryo must be shown to be free in order for the recognition of and identification with the fetus to occur. The strategy of the anti-abortionists, she says, is to make fetal personhood a self-fulfilling prophecy by making the fetus an independent presence in a visual culture. Sarah Franklin (1991) concurs, adding that given the naturalness of the solitary fetus, it seems only natural to give it medical and legal rights. The fact that an embryo or fetus can be a patient is confused with its being a person. Franklin also notes two rhetorical strategies associated with these images: fetal autonomy and innocent purity. Thus, not only has the fetus entered our national consciousness, it has taken on the character of the pre-baby—a real person.

Through the construction of public fetal images as "baby pictures," the fetus is visibly separated from its mother and can consequently enter the social imagination alone. It is relatively easy to untangle the symbolic reasons that would encourage fetal autonomy: Embryo photography has personified the fetus by replacing the mother with empty space. As Daniels (1993) has said, "In much of the promotional literature of the anti-abortion movement, the fetus is visually severed from the mother, presented as an autonomous free-floating being, attached tenuously to the 'mother ship' by the umbilical cord." Or, as Franklin (1991) says, "The conditions for spectator recognition of and identification with the fetus are achieved on the basis of its separation and individuation from the mother."

Interestingly, sonograms do not have the same message as the color pictures seen on the web or in magazines. First, they have to be interpreted. Their features are not obviously human. Second, the sonograms are usually interpreted to both partners, and it becomes a developing part of the family. Women receiving sonograms are not merely passive recipients of the public fetus; nor are they the guardians of some private fetus. The sonograms allow both partners to share in the wonders of the embryo's development, and as such, the embryo has a more familial status (Howes-Mishel, unpublished thesis).

There is no such thing as an uninterpreted human embryo. Very few of us have had the privilege to see a real human embryo or fetus before it is born. Therefore, our views of the human embryo rely on photographs and drawings. Most of what we envision as a human fetus is constructed of images we have seen on the web, books, and magazines. This is the "public fetus". These images are extremely powerful tools in the debate on personhood. In 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld an Indiana statute mandating that all women seeking abortions have a one-on-one counseling session during which time they would be shown pictures of embryos and fetuses. The abortion lobbyists called this a great victory, since, they claim, such photographs will show the women what they are intending to destroy and convince them not to have the abortion. Such pictures can show autonomy or dependence, humanity or animality, depending on the context in which it is presented. It is important for biologists to realize that the scientific pictures in books, magazines, and websites are not often neutral, but have social relevance far beyond the science.

Literature cited

Daniels, Cynthia R. 1993. At Women's Expense: State Power and the Politics of Fetal Rights. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Franklin, Sarah. 1991. Fetal Fascinations: New Dimensions to the Medical-Scientific Construction of Fetal Personhood. In Franklin, S., Lury, C., and Stacey, J. (eds.) Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies. Routledge, New York.

Foucault, Michel. 1973. The Birth of the Clinic: an Archaeology of Medical Perception. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. Pantheon Books, New York.

Hartouni, Valerie. 1997. Cultural Conceptions: On Reproductive Technologies and the Remaking of Life. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Petchesky, Rosalind. 2000. Foetal Images: The Power of Visual Culture in the Politics of Reproduction. In Kirkup, G., Janes, L., Woodward, K., and Hovenden, F. (eds.) The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader. Routledge, London.

Taylor, Janelle. 1998. Image of Contradiction: Obstetrical Ultrasound in American Culture. In Franklin, S. and Ragone, H. (eds.) Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power and Technological Innovation. University of Philadelphia Press, Philadelphia.

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