Unknown Speaker 00:01 distribution of the channel of transmission is a little bit more interesting than I think people are beginning to get out of sophisticated analysis of how the transmission is constructed. It seemed to me when I watched the sign in screen, that it was an image of an image of an image. It's three concentric frames. In fact, because it especially if you watched it on ABC television news, you're watching your television, there's your television screen, within which you have the monitor, right of the video display, within which the image of the sonogram and each of these frames connotes a different message or different content. In fact, our own TV or video screen which frames a male narrator in the sequence of events connotes the most familiar form of truth picturing in our culture, the news, we're watching the news we're watching things are happening. However, skeptical we are, there's some sense of that when we watch this film, the second screen, the video display registers, that registers the sonogram image connotes fee topology, right advanced, we're on the frontier now of obstetrical medicine, the latest thing it can do, it can show us everything. And he of course, accentuates this by saying how far he can go. And finally, the image of the fetal form. Amorphous dense, is an inkblot as somebody was saying, it's really you were pointing out, it's really actually very fuzzy. And yet, when we look at it, we feel in through all of that theme imagery that we've been exposed to, in the larger culture anywhere we don't, we're aware of one in the same time, but it's adult, you know, it's, it's an amorphous image. And at the same time, it connotes things for us. Okay, the point, to me the most interesting of these three moments or points is the point of reception, how we are constructed ourselves to see this film as feminists, we're angered by it, we're annoyed by it, we're picking up a lot of contradictions in it. That Hokkien is something new music, you know, at the very moment, everybody laughs You know, when the mortgage or the music comes out, or just a particular moment in the head, it seems to me that we have to be open to our own vulnerability to these this proliferation of images, everything from, you know, billboards, 2001, A Space Odyssey. And so all of these images rescue the film from utter absurdity, they give it a context, they make it credible within the larger culture, because the fetal form has had an imprint in the larger culture, a symbolic importance that condenses within it, a whole series of losses, sexual innocence compliant women, American Imperial like it is the homunculus this fetal form, and what we have to do I think what actually disturbs me a lot is that I hear very few feminists actually critiquing this, the straight image, as opposed to the garbage can images, the fetal Court itself, which is a dismembered, disembodied image and utterly a fetish. I mean, I just like to say the fetus is a fetish. Feel images now permeate the American cultural landscape and I believe saturate abortion discourse. I'm probably contributing to that by giving this talk and writing this paper, the curled up profile with its enlarged head and feeling like suspended it's an inevitable that the most innocent, innocent, the most benign of disfigurement, it just is the most familiar. It's in its amniotic sac. And it's very familiar to us it sort of swinging out there in space, and this prototypical fetal image epitomizes the very distortion that is inherent in all photographic images, their tendency to slice up reality to disembodied to compartmentalize and wrench out historical contexts. In social contexts, when Nathan's in claims to be presenting an abortion from the vantage point of the victim. Of course, we have to immediately challenge that if the fetus had any vantage point, it could not possibly experience itself as dangling in space, without a woman's uterus and body and bloodstream to support it. So in this respect, every one of us fetal images is a fetish, an artificial construct representing the standpoint of neither an actual fetus nor a pregnant woman, but a male onlooker. Barbara Katz recommended her new book rights fit because she has a wonderful thing I love to quote. She says the fetus in utero has become a metaphor. For men in space, Unknown Speaker 05:03 floating free attached only by the umbilical cord to the spaceship, or the pregnant woman has become empty space. Inside, that was the end of the cord this is inside this futurism spaceship, however, is a much older image. The free floating fetus extends to gestation. The hubs in view of the bore of born human beings as disconnected, solitary individuals who are paradoxically helpless, and also autonomous at the same time, they're both helpless and vulnerable, and autonomous and heroic. In these abstract individuals in the faces the pregnant woman and the fetuses dependency story, and it just wipes the mind. And it also gives the fetal image it's symbolic transparency, it's useful as a as a symbol, so that we can read in it a whole lot of things ourselves are lost, or mythic past. Medical technology, of course, enhances and all the emphasis or be tolerated the focus on the fetus through officer limited prenatal diagnosis, in vitro fertilization, electronic fetal monitoring, all of these kinds of things be the therapies focusing on the fetus as patient, the visualization fetus earlier and earlier in the pregnancy, good luck, it kicks it spits it grows and excretes. These seem to verify its separateness, its autonomy, and to contribute to this Phaedo centric culture in obstetrics in our society. About just by the way, it seems to me that the increasing emphasis on the problem of viability plays into this a great deal, and what we find I think, picked up in the culture is Sandra Day. O'Connor's image of, you know, we're pushing viability back further and further and further indefinitely, so that we're going to save tinier and tinier fetuses. And I was struck when there was there was some people some extent to which this was picked up in television last year are more common than it was Hill Street Blues Da Vinci history, when it was a story about was ostensibly a story about clinical trials. There was a confrontation very sort of feeble anti abortion, which is out this picket Floyd and he whacks this woman who's five months pregnant, was planning around, figuring out Is she going to get an abortion or not, and she miscarried. And is in the hospital. In fact, it ends up that this live was born. And there's a tub roll. And in fact, the whole focus, ostensibly about thin phones is actually in this hospital, where you see this Holy Family of the Man, That Woman is married, she has a typical abortion quick, totally a typical, she's married, she has three kids, she's like in her early 30s, or something. And here she is, with her husband who's out of work, and they're weeping. And this little fetus is on the side, in the incubator, and then it dies. And they are holding each other and weeping. In other words, it's really about a baby and a family, even though the show was supposed to be about abortion. And in this kind of imagery, abortions are really babies. Abortions are really more and more late abortions, which is not the truth. I mean, simply like 92% of all abortions are in the first trimester and a very large proportion of them in the first eight weeks in the society and that's not changing. It's not growing, remain somewhat stable. So these images blur the boundary between the fetus and baby. They reinforce the idea of the fetus as identity as separate and autonomous from the mother. The living separate child is making it speculative speculated I don't know this might be completely silly. But I wonder I don't have any empirical evidence whether people's reactions to the speed of images are gender specific. Whether women may be inclined to see those images through the veil of their own pregnancy process and warnings. Man on the other hand, lacking any experience or anticipation of pregnancy, maybe like to feel forms as replicas of itself, heroically surviving as if by its own powers or alternatively mortally threatened by maternal power. Just offer that to you it it ties into the hot seat. What are you doing two types of penetration Unknown Speaker 09:58 penetration with the abortionist. Here's the movies you're trying to show us is Unknown Speaker 10:03 the penetration on Unknown Speaker 10:09 national subjects, they're often the same, same the same Unknown Speaker 10:17 at the same time. And I do not need you on the survivor both both things at the same time. Now, if these images have been inscribed in the culture in television, science fiction film fantasy, and so I'm wondering, to what extent they have penetrated the clinical ultrasound images. I don't know this is hot, you know, I'm just waiting. Unknown Speaker 10:53 No, no, I'm just applying that how one response might be different, depending on whether I will also argue, though, that how one response is a woman is going to be dependent on a lot of things that the film doesn't take into into account. I don't think feminists who have critiqued reproductive technology have either taken into account, it will be dependent on that woman's class and race. Her situation in society also be dependent on her biological situation. I hesitated to say, her pregnancy history and the evidence we have is that how women respond to things. And some good studies have been done. On a fetal monitors, whether they were they experienced electronic fetal monitors as invasive or helpful is correlated to a large degree with what the pregnancy industry has been have. They had a history of miscarriages, fetal losses, difficulties, they welcome that technology. But this isn't universally true, but it tends to be pattern. Have I not had that kind of history, they see it as invasive, intrusive, they don't want it around. And I think that's interesting and worth thinking about since we tend to discount individual biology and to ignore that, in fact, biology to its historical, and its particular, its particularity is what makes it important for us to take care of that sort of jumping ahead. I think there's just a couple of points I want to make about the question. Second question that I raised, which is how do real women respond to these kinds of images given the cultural, strong cultural definition of the images? One is that I think women's responses are in some ways going to be mediated by male clinicians responses. I think that to some degree are unavoidable. We don't we still have a patriarchal medical establishment. Most obstetrician gynecologist are men. And I'm not encouraged by how they describe the language they use to talk about the experience ultrasonographer what it is they're doing and what is it that reminded us of some of the writing of everyone talks about science and its gender bias, and also about prevalence of visual the prevalence of the days in medical science. And I just thought I'd read you a couple of quotes. But they seem to reinforce Keller's analysis of male dominated science as a battlefield and also as a warrior mystic enterprise. You was skipping musket my quote from life. Life magazine when it first presented a sonar look at the unborn baby in January. described it this way. This was the first description at the point of office and the astonishing medical machine resting on this pregnant woman's abdomen in a Philadelphia hospital is looking at her unborn child in precisely the same way a navy surface ship focusing on the enemy separately. Using the sonar principle, it is bombarding her with a beam of ultra high frequency sound waves that are inaudible to the human ear, that can be et cetera. Then, here's Nathan said, interviewed in Newsweek at just after the silent scream was released, he boasted with the aid of technology, we stripped away the walls of the abdomen and uterus and looked into the wound. And here was Michael Harrison, writing and respected actually, medical journal about fetal management to ultrasound imaging. The fetus could not be taken seriously as long as he remained a medical records in an opaque room. And it was no until the last half of the century that the prying eye of the altar sonogram, render the ones opaque, transparent, stripping the veil of mystery and simply stripping the veil of history from the dark inner sanctum and letting the light of scientific observation fall on the shy and secretive betas, the sonographic while you're spying on the fetus, points him or her surprisingly active in the future, no matter what a passive person whatever your thoughts about an AI, do, I you know when can go on about this in terms of feminist critiques of objectivity in Unknown Speaker 15:38 the pretense of objectivity nevertheless. And I don't think I don't think voyeurism is something specifically male, it still strikes me that the sighting of the womb as a space to be conquered could only be packed by one who stands outside it will give you this view of the fetus is a little shy, because it's also this predatory notion of ultra solar, you could strip it away and we can seize the image. Unknown Speaker 16:08 Women's bodies, just the the way. Unknown Speaker 16:12 The pin optics of the room that's very much present Unknown Speaker 16:17 to speak with auditory and tactile auscultation and doing chest which is totally there is a feeling increased this Unknown Speaker 16:37 represents a loss. Unknown Speaker 16:41 There is increased distance, but apparently some clinicians find that it was liberating. Certainly increased distance for the woman as patient and what feminist writers like Barbara are now dramatically is the displacement of the woman as patient, her sort of peripheral position and turned away, the doctor turned away from her examining her baby, which is, you know, out here on the screen in the cartoon a bit actually, that I can pass it on. At the same time, and I think that's true. And I think that you don't have very much time, I just want to point out this argument. Even though it's true, that the uses of optris seem to be in the direction of displacing women objectifying them more in clinical contexts. At the same time, women themselves do not always experience alienating or rejecting what they express is that they sense they serve to direct participation and even emotion into these images, it makes the baby more feel our baby. Visualizing feels creating intimacy, having that little photograph, you said that, I guess it didn't impress you too much, Barbara. But taking home that sonogram photograph, which is not very common, you get a still quite a bit with your ultrasound image, particularly putting the baby elephant. Unknown Speaker 18:46 Over Debbie showed that to your boy, he's very, very Unknown Speaker 18:53 just interrupted me, I was struck that they gave you this picture. And the reason I think I was it wasn't impressed was just maybe, because I didn't want to look at the fetus as a baby. And I haven't showed it to my kids yet. But I want to know after this session, I can think about how to present it. Unknown Speaker 19:09 Well, I think we need to think about why the experience may be one of self empowerment in certain circumstances and in what circumstances that may be true that will maybe having a sense of greater control over pregnancy. And particularly, of course, this is going to be when the when one wants to have a pregnancy and the baby obviously, when one does not. It's very, very different. But it seemed to me just to make one or two points about this. That some of the reasons why women may be experiencing these images as empowering even though others may be pointing intimidating those who want to get abortion. I don't know I've just heard a few stories but in fact young women viewing the silence. decide not to get infections. We don't have any agreement. hard evidence about one thing that is the point that I made before about pregnancy was that it would appear and this was true. With your right to life when we saw that fetus and fetal images is their little die, who identified with it very strongly, many of them a disproportionate number of them had a history of pregnancy or child. Second, if we look at the women who comprise the market for high tech, abstract obstetrics, including ultrasound, they are mainly the ones who can afford these procedures. At this point in time, there are mainly middle class, upscale women who are products of a middle class culture that values planning, control, predictability, in the interest of a quality baby, we're being told more than ever, that, that that to produce a non quality baby is the responsible that they have the tools, they have the apparatus now, so they hit better use it and come up with the best quality product that they can. They can select, and they can, and they are responsible for quality control for how the baby turns out. A third, of course, that's very double edged. That's the enforcement of women's traditional fields. Some women in fact experience the ability to produce a quality baby personally, even though I'm disabled, under current year of discipline, bias against disability as a kind of power that they have control over something they wouldn't have had control over 20 years ago. And that's obviously raises hard questions, I think for feminists, who inherit an ideal a value of liberal choice regarding to the extent that we place value in the idea of that woman's right to decide that woman's right to control her pregnancies, etc, we have a real problem than making value judgments about her decision, which we don't want her decision to, after me have some Jesus of work, you know, the wrong sex fetus, or to have an abortion based on some perception of disability, for those of us who are very concerned about disability rights. So that's a very problematic area. A third, a third point I'll make about the predisposition or willingness to situate the whole discussion back in the realm of photography. seem to me hearing about liver Have you experienced this, getting your little picture your fetal sonogram picture to take the baby out that it is located ultrasound imaging in a tradition, a very familial tradition, Unknown Speaker 22:55 tradition. Particularly among middle class people, family albums originated to chronicle the continuity of first working groups, home movies, like the 40s and 50s. Going back to that cue, who made the home movies, mommy, mommy made them a movie for me kept the baby album. And it's mommy who takes home. The ultrasound picture in some cases, in one case, documented anyway, to a dying grandfather to prefer that the limit was coming along even though he was going to die before it was born. It's the woman who keeps up. The album takes the film's and specific relationship with women to photographic images, helps explain the attraction of pregnant women to ultrasound images of their own fetus. One more point about this and it gets back to the thing you were talking about. Both objective it is both outside and you're bonding with it. It seems to me that rather than surprised that some women experience bonding with a fetus. After viewing its image on the screen. Perhaps we should understand this as a culturally embedded component of desire. If it is a form of objectifying the fetus, and also the pregnant woman is detached from the fetus. Perhaps such objectification and detachment are necessary for her to feel erotic pleasure. If the ultrasound image, she recognizes the fetus as real, it's out there. Perhaps this means she can first experience it as an object she can possess, and in some ways, have a sense of empowerment and just speculate. But I think it's much more complicated, that this is imagery that it clearly raises for us a lot of questions about what's going on with technology. And finally, why do I think that I think that we have two problems. We have to at least one of them is that we have to confirm public images of the public fetus by in some ways we casting the imagery is putting reinserting the fetus back in the pregnant woman, the pregnant woman back in society back in her whole set of social circumstances. And that's part of the problem of re embedding abortion back in all the range of reproductive health, sexual and social problems. That's one task. And so it's a task of really confronting and changing the imagery from a fetal centric culture to back to a woman centered set of images on the other tests we have no, it's very different. We have to look at situations where women are making decisions based on fetal technology decisions sometimes that we might not have to think through how to feminist approach moral questions, I think we have to do that in a very very serious way and decide whether we are happy with the idea of individual choice as the only basis for making decisions I don't know if that God is too far from the silent screen but anyway does anybody have any further comments I feel even before we even identify something about the whole thing like all the posters and rolled up sort of there is something to think about what to do something about those things we want to see is images that have been traditionally seen it's Unknown Speaker 27:55 very complicated Unknown Speaker 28:05 claim for the ability to visually associate try to recreate associations Unknown Speaker 28:29 we're not, not not Unknown Speaker 28:37 we're not perfect. We're not using we are taking enough but we're not the default we're not actively defining what images of nurturance are and we risk I mean, the whole idea of pre embodying the fetus means re emphasizing womanism not sure woman has vessel for you know and what do we have as an alternative? Motions are cast are exactly three dark scary scary scary Day been brought into existence we should mourn it only because we were in the past we wouldn't work we didn't know so we're starting to see Unknown Speaker 32:31 we are never conscious why some shade Unknown Speaker 32:48 to the center the new iconography that you enjoy. I just wanted so suggestive and rich. And it just takes me in different directions. One is this customer asked me to just the hours we see the politics, the comments when the shifts that are that are currently the cause of them are dropping results start to change how many women talk about pregnancy and what kinds of specific languages may arise. Not only the thing that you said about the males, which was so clear on those doctors to appear in the past the woman into this other selling cells but just more generally, the sense that maybe men feel differently about pregnancy are closer to it as well as the woman of course has that kind of intimacy. But there may be that soon. So do you think the themes is separate from that woman is making you feel a whole bunch of new psychological issues in relation to pregnancy might arise and an end and different gender specific? I don't necessarily I'm just thinking out loud. I think that all those will be negative. I mean, maybe there's some very interesting some bonding male bonding with a fetus that never could happen before that we're going to conceive of and a feminist frame, you know, if one were building one's own icon, or whatever, we're talking about the both parents being able to look at the same picture and providing a much more stable and offensively the physicality so I think that's hard. I'm not sure about that. But it just it maybe doesn't happen that way. But just the idea that that we were at a moment when all of that was shifting around and it's just absolutely in a way it's up for grabs, but I will still stick with Carol's. Story trial Unknown Speaker 35:23 Hate your office it's been bonded with their unborn children for eons as objects of proprietary use Unknown Speaker 35:33 they just put there and that's the most accurate probably the best thing we think of first I'm just trying to think whether we can you know, it seems to me that part of what we've done that's so exciting is this sense of it all you know sort of almost unfolding almost like a fast photograph of the ship and how we were seeing this almost year to year but different ways we're going to be able to see it three years from now five years from now very kinetic material artificial Dr. White is finally down she's taking experiences floating, man, ain't me no one else, and it was all. In terms of a fabulous vision. Maybe Unknown Speaker 37:45 you want to have more anti technological determinist. I just wanted to make this Unknown Speaker 38:01 point about a context in which I think most of us have had the experience of ultrasound images, which is usually as I think in the context of amniocentesis, Unknown Speaker 38:14 is that true? Those increasingly routine with pregnant work for me, and increasingly in 1/3, or 1/3 of all pregnancies. And underneath? Because they deal with just issues whatsoever. Unknown Speaker 38:34 Because so many of them, I mean, because I think many of us, at least the point in which we saw that image was at this very freaky moment where on the one hand is supposed to be this moment of bonding. And on the other hand, is moment in Unknown Speaker 38:47 which you know, you're doing this because presumably, you wouldn't be doing it unless you were willing to award a quote, unquote, affected fetus. Unknown Speaker 38:55 And that is, you know, a very bizarre kind of scary, you know, kind of moment, which I mean, I don't I certainly didn't experience it as if it were that experts told because your addiction your Unknown Speaker 39:11 feelings and spirits, Unknown Speaker 39:13 absolutely everything sort of, you know, that tend to do this. And if anything, then you know, you do sort of with fascination to see Oh, yes. You know, you cancelled CDs, or whatever it is not. Unknown Speaker 39:25 Can we just respond to the thing about participation? I mean, I do feel a little reluctant to jump to the conclusion, either that there's gonna be any definitive outcome in terms of the gender relations of child rearing in relation to children. The Bible is a technology that made it possible for me in a different relationship to babies, and didn't revolutionize it. This will not revolutionize and what determines the meanings of ultrasound images will still be the social relations that we have we Try to change Unknown Speaker 40:01 so that's my quick spring what can even dream of using different objects that we could use we could use we're not You're not simply saying Unknown Speaker 40:11 this is an intrusion No Unknown Speaker 40:14 no no one would seem to be saying tested waiting and some of that is happening that's part of why I tried to write this because it's a much Unknown Speaker 40:37 stronger set you able to remove growing it outside the womb so they're supported by somebody who wants every option Unknown Speaker 41:32 I understand your mind Unknown Speaker 41:47 and then back up again to take to take a pre employment condition at the appropriate stage and they do that they can do that very easily it's not super nice to be in any sort of like animal maybe it's a development that was going on and Unknown Speaker 42:20 not for the purpose of animal husbandry a lot of artificial great Unknown Speaker 42:32 so do these two elements that are very cool like making jeans and all all the workers and all the technology going to say that everyone can do it should be able to be in the same place with someone else Unknown Speaker 43:28 but that doesn't mean it's it's it's too soon for ideologically the idea that this is separate this is potentially separable from you therefore you should have no say over whether it was morally Unknown Speaker 44:03 have decided to Unknown Speaker 44:13 be able to harvest later you know there seems to be dancewear scientific research not really pushing math major scientific development right Spirit this is your last Unknown Speaker 45:31 one break. real question. I raise that in this paper. We didn't discuss it here. But there is some question as to not only safety with efficacy. In other words, what really is accomplished by routine officer imaging, there was a major report. There was a major report of a group of physicians that questioned, in fact, the routine use of ultrasound imaging, there's no conclusive evidence that it's safe, there's no conclusive evidence that it's true. But there's also no conclusive evidence that it's safe, especially in terms of long term studies, using them very frequently. Unknown Speaker 46:19 We're getting them every few weeks because some small province was informed, so they have intent. Unknown Speaker 46:24 It's very interesting. Why do doctors want to use this it goes back to the same about the prevalence of the gaze. I mean, the compulsion almost assumption that if you can just see you'll figure out some problems that are there. So if you look at the indications listed in obstetrics textbooks and manuals on ultrasound image imaging, the indications are wrong to head measurement. Right, right now, okay. Unknown Speaker 47:31 Eric McCroskey, do we want a four party but we'd like to restore. So what are Unknown Speaker 47:44 we talking about? Today, so I'll try to get into