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Abort This! (PIC)

  
 
Foust is SO authentic
13:56 / 14.07.04
The image I'd like you all to see is copyrighted, so I can't simply post it here. Still, head for journalist Michael Clancy's homepage and have a look.

Here's the story, as it appears on his website.

As a veteran photojournalist in Nashville, Tennessee, I was hired by USA Today newspaper to photograph a spina bifida corrective surgical procedure. It was to be performed on a twenty-one week old fetus in utero at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. At that time, in 1999, twenty-one weeks in utero was the earliest that the surgical team would consider for surgery. The worst possible outcome would be that the surgery would cause premature delivery, and no child born earlier than twenty-three weeks had survived.

The tension could be felt in the operating room as the surgery began. A typical C-section incision was made to access the uterus, which was then lifted out and laid at the junction of the mother's thighs. The entire procedure would take place within the uterus, and no part of the child was to breach the surgical opening. During the procedure, the position of the fetus was adjusted by gently manipulating the outside of the uterus. The entire surgical procedure on the child was completed in 1 hour and thirteen minutes. When it was over, the surgical team breathed a sigh of relief, as did I.

As a doctor asked me what speed of film I was using, out of the corner of my eye I saw the uterus shake, but no one's hands were near it. It was shaking from within. Suddenly, an entire arm thrust out of the opening, then pulled back until just a little hand was showing. The doctor reached over and lifted the hand, which reacted and squeezed the doctor's finger. As if testing for strength, the doctor shook the tiny fist. Samuel held firm. I took the picture! Wow! It happened so fast that the nurse standing next to me asked, "What happened?" "The child reached out," I said. "Oh. They do that all the time," she responded.

The surgical opening to the uterus was closed and the uterus was then put back into the mother and the C-section opening was closed.

It was ten days before I knew if the picture was even in focus. To ensure no digital manipulation of images before they see them, USA Today requires that film be submitted unprocessed. When the photo editor finally phoned me he said, "It's the most incredible picture I've ever seen."

Shouldn't this effectively reopen the abortion debate?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:05 / 14.07.04
Uh - why? Are you saying that a foetus' ability to grip at 21 weeks should make abortion at 21 weeks illegal? Does that, then, mean that gripping is proof of the ability to survive outside the womb, or proof of intelligence? I think we already knew that the foetus has limbs...
 
 
Grey Area
15:34 / 14.07.04
Also, the fact that the baby reached out and grasped the surgeon's finger is an urban myth, as described here. The surgeon in question is quoted as follows:

"It has become an urban legend," says Bruner, the Vanderbilt University surgeon who fixed the spina bifida lesion on Samuel. Many people he hears from wonder whether it's a fake.

"One person said the photo had been reviewed by a team of medical experts and they had determined that it was a hoax," Bruner says with a laugh.

More commonly, people want to know how the photo came to be.

Some opponents of abortion have claimed that the baby reached through the womb and grabbed the doctor's hand.

Not true, Bruner says.

Samuel and his mother, Julie, were under anesthesia and could not move.

"The baby did not reach out," Bruner says. "The baby was anesthetized. The baby was not aware of what was going on."
 
 
Linus Dunce
17:27 / 14.07.04
Has anyone seen a baby carried to full term do this? Reach out and grab an object they can't even see? This little fellow seems remarkably developed for his years. Also, maybe my persistence of vision is wack, but all I see is a foetal hand in various positions resting on a gloved finger.

To ensure no digital manipulation of images before they see them, USA Today requires that film be submitted unprocessed.

And images taken on a digital camera or bought from a picture library must be put into an envelope sealed with wax and sprinkled with vinegar.
 
 
Nobody's girl
05:03 / 15.07.04
This is typical Pro-Life propaganda. Just like the photo's of a fetus sucking its thumb. Just because a fetus exhibits reflexive reactions we can easily anthropomorphise does not necessarily mean it is a fully paid up member of the human race.

The pic in question does seem a touch suspicious. I'm much more inclined to believe Snopes's version of events to be honest.

Pro-Life websites have some really messed up doctored pics of aborted fetuses designed to freak out and convert. Check out some of the pics and videos from this nasty piece of work. The pics are NOT WORK SAFE, really sick stuff.

The stuff that has been making me rethink my position in the debate recently has been the 3D scans
they've been taking which have shown some interesting behaviour in fetuses. I'm still not particularly convinced refelxive reactions = human, though.
 
 
Smoothly
09:09 / 15.07.04
I wouldn't have thought anyone is even close to *suspecting* that 'relexive reactions = human'.
Is there a debate about whether human foetuses are human?

Also, what's wrong the Pro-Life lobby using images of aborted foetuses to convert people to their cause? It's interesting that Nobody's girl describes the images as being 'really sick', while, I gather, supporting the abortions themselves.
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
13:59 / 15.07.04
Word.

No-one can pinpoint exactly when each foetus becomes independently viable and able to survive outside the womb, abortion will always be an argument concerning whether you believe life begins at conception or not.
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
14:11 / 15.07.04
And please, let's not demonise ALL pro-lifers as rabid religious maniacs spewing propaganda - many are genuinely heart-felt in their convictions and are just as much anti-death penalty as they are anti-abortion.
 
 
w1rebaby
14:23 / 15.07.04
I wouldn't have thought anyone is even close to *suspecting* that 'relexive reactions = human'.
Is there a debate about whether human foetuses are human?

Yes, clearly, or at least as to whether they count as human beings (human toenails are human). If there wasn't the argument would be entirely different. Many pro-lifers use the words "foetus", "baby" and "child" interchangeably.

Also, what's wrong the Pro-Life lobby using images of aborted foetuses to convert people to their cause? It's interesting that Nobody's girl describes the images as being 'really sick', while, I gather, supporting the abortions themselves.

Because "yuk -> don't do it" and "it looks a bit like a baby therefore it's a baby" are frequently considered rather bad arguments?
 
 
alas
18:22 / 15.07.04
It can also be an argument about a woman's right to bodily integrity. Which, to my mind, is the most important one: Every adult human (and to some degree each child), should have the right to say who can enter hir body (and how and when); who can injure hir body (e.g., in the case of surgery, as well as pregnancy) and how and when; and who can use hir bodily resources (and how and when).

And if, at any point, one doesn't like the use being made by another being--regardless of the status of that other being (fetal or human)--of one's body, then one should be able to stop that use. I can't just demand you give me a kidney, even if that would be a good thing for you to do. Even if your kidney is the only kidney in the world that will save my life, I cannot force you to give it to me. Even if your refusal means I die.

If we do not have the right to make those decisions on our own, then we are not regarded as full member of the moral community and we are not regarded as adults. That's the problem. The debate desperately needs reframing.
 
 
w1rebaby
19:29 / 15.07.04
(Wasn't there a double Haus post just there after mine? I think perhaps both of them may have been submitted for deletion or something...)
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
22:28 / 15.07.04
Yes, there was.

Clearly a case of moderators abusing their powers.

FASCISTS!

Ahem. I just said that

abortion will always be an argument concerning whether you believe life begins at conception or not.

Was not in fact the only argument about abortion - another one being that of when life becomes equivalent in terms of legal protection to that of a human being. But I think Alas took that along another step in the interim.
 
 
Smoothly
09:34 / 16.07.04
Is this the thread to discuss the rights and wrongs of abortion per se? Aren't there are other threads for that. I gather the purpose of this thread is to discuss if/how images like Clancy's affect the debate. And I think this question is particularly interesting in light of current debates about graphic propaganda - from the gruesome autopsy pictures on cigarette packets to images of casualties in Iraq.

Fridgemagnet says, "yuk -> don't do it" and "it looks a bit like a baby therefore it's a baby" are frequently considered rather bad arguments?.
Why are these bad arguments (or, more accurately, ways of furthering an argument)? Arguably the Clancy pictures are deceptive in that they possibly do not represent exactly what they claim to represent. But what about the Abortion TV ones linked by Nobody's girl? Are they dishonest, obfuscatory, counter-productive, what? Are people in a better informed for not seeing such images? Is the debate fairer without them?
 
 
Grey Area
11:21 / 16.07.04
Well, one thing that always gets me about the use of gruesome pictures to support the anti-abortion campaign is that frequently the gravity of the results of not aborting can't really be demonstrated in a picture. I mean, it's hard to convey the burden of motherhood, and the resulting upheaval in your life, through a couple of polaroids. The emotional impact just isn't there. Whereas the emotional impact of the pics bandied about by the pro-lifers is huge.
 
 
Pingle!Pop
11:26 / 16.07.04
Is this the thread to discuss the rights and wrongs of abortion per se? Aren't there are other threads for that. I gather the purpose of this thread is to discuss if/how images like Clancy's affect the debate."

... There's also already a thread on that. The arguments seemed to end up going round in circles and re-stated rather a lot, but I think it pretty well covers the whole validity-of-shock-images argument.
 
 
w1rebaby
11:43 / 16.07.04
Why are these bad arguments (or, more accurately, ways of furthering an argument)? Arguably the Clancy pictures are deceptive in that they possibly do not represent exactly what they claim to represent. But what about the Abortion TV ones linked by Nobody's girl? Are they dishonest, obfuscatory, counter-productive, what? Are people in a better informed for not seeing such images? Is the debate fairer without them?

I only see two roles for images such as these here.

The propaganda role of these images ("yuk") shows grisly details as a means of eliciting disgust and a negative reaction to the subject at hand. Aborted foetuses do indeed look a bit like dead babies, and dead babies are yukky. That's all very well, but it's not actually an argument. You might consider it a reasonable way to advance a good cause, if you believe in the cause for other reasons, but it's not an argument.

(Thinking about it, there could be an argument there on the basis of "these things are yukky, we should try to limit the amount of yukkiness around, therefore stop abortions" but I think, given that it would outlaw most other surgery as well, very few people here would accept it.)

Images can also be used to illustrate an argument here, but the only one that they seem to be being used to illustrate is "it looks a bit like a baby therefore it's a baby". The site Nobody's Girl linked to says this explicitly:

our society has operated under a misconception that the developing fetus is just a "mass of tissue."  We now know that a developing human being is remarkable ... heart beating, arms and legs flailing, thumb sucking.  In short, a "fetus" is simply an "honest-to-goodness" human being.

They are showing you lots of pictures of aborted foetuses in various stages of development looking a bit like babies, in an attempt to convince you that they are babies. And while "you should not kill babies, foetuses looks like babies, therefore foetuses are babies, therefore you should not kill foetuses" is an argument, it's fundamentally flawed, because "X looks like a Y -> X is a Y" just doesn't work.

The images on that site are also displayed without any sort of medical context, which I consider dishonest, since the implication is that all of them were entirely elective which is probably not the case.

---

I was considering this in comparison to war photography just now. A lot of people say we should show more grisly photos of body parts to counterbalance the "surgical strike" propaganda and constant use of military euphemism, and bring it home to viewers here that yes, there are real people getting blown apart by your government.

Anti-abortionists will similarly say that they wave dead baby pictures to counterbalance the constant the "surgical" propaganda and constant use of medical euphemism, and bring it home to the public that yes, there are real babies getting ripped apart by your doctors.

I think there is a difference though, and not just because I support one aim and oppose the other. Firstly, there is some informational value to war pictures because they do sometimes contradict government statements that no civilians were killed, or that the attack caused little collateral damage etc. Doctors don't claim that no foetuses are harmed during abortion. This isn't the major point of the "show more detached feet" campaign though.

Secondly, there's general consensus that what is illustrated by grisly war photography is bad. It's people who've been blown up. That's a bad thing. There is no such consensus on grisly abortion photos. Some people see feotuses equals babies, but some people see foetuses not equals babies, and while they may not appreciate seeing dead baby-like things they don't necessarily think that the process is wrong.

So there's a missing step here. Before you can treat the two uses of photography as the same you have to have that consensus, which doesn't exist. Nobody's trying to convince you that killing people is wrong with war photography, they assume you already think that. But pro-lifers with foetus pictures are trying to convince you that killing foetuses is wrong with them, because otherwise they're irrelevant, and the only way that they seem to be doing that to me is with one of the two arguments above. The ones that I said are bad.

(I missed my train while typing this, I hope someone reads it all.)
 
 
Brigade du jour
21:38 / 17.07.04
Hey fridgemagnet, I read your post, and I bet I'm not the only one.

At the risk of playing Devil's advocate, however, I'd like to pick you up on your point that there's general consensus that what is illustrated by grisly war photography is bad. It's people who've been blown up. That's a bad thing.

I agree that it's a bad thing, I'm sure lots of people on Barbelith agree that it's a bad thing. But aren't there millions and millions of people who think blowing up human bodies is all right as long as they're not on our side?

I mean ok, there's probably way more of a consensus against extensive physical violence on any human being per se than there is against or for abortion, but still. Ah, maybe I'm just being depressing.
 
 
w1rebaby
22:14 / 17.07.04
That's true, some people do entirely dismiss "enemy" casualties. Looking back I think maybe I tried to put forward a case for a difference in type too strongly there.

I think there's a big difference in proportion though which kind of looked like a difference in type at that time in the morning. If we divide responses into three groups...

(a) "I see nothing wrong with that" - meaning "those people were subhuman and killing them has no more importance than killing dandelions", or "a foetus isn't a person so it doesn't matter if you kill it"

(b) "There is something wrong with that but other circumstances may justify it" - i.e. "I'd rather we didn't have to kill those soldiers but it was necessary" or "A foetus is partly human and aware and has something of a right to life, but maybe it was medically necessary to save the mother"

(c) "That is always wrong" - complete pacifism or "never kill the foetus no matter if it means the mother would die"

...I think that in the case of the abortion pics, group (a) is way larger, and a lot more people are near one end of group (b) (something like "you shouldn't kill foetuses for no reason at all, but if the mother wants to, that justifies it"). The general equivalency between people in war photos and other people is higher than that between foetuses and people.

The question with war photography is rarely "are these really people?" but rather "given that killing people is wrong, can you justify this with a sufficiently positive outcome?" If you are in group (b), seeing the images forces you to confront that question and gives a lot more weight to the "no" side through emphasis of quite how bad it is.

With this model, it's not surprising that so much propaganda has concentrated on dehumanisation, to the point where you actually have to argue that, say, Abu Ghraib prisoners were likely not terrorists before you can start questioning the morality of what happened in the photos there, because it doesn't matter what happens to terrorists. Fuck 'em. We can do what we like with them. They started it and we'll finish it, etc etc.

Exactly how uncaring you have to be about a foetus or a person to fall into group (a) is a bit fuzzy here, but regardless of that, I think the distribution is definitely a lot different, even considering today's atmosphere.
 
 
Brigade du jour
22:25 / 17.07.04
Yep, I was being depressing!

No you're right, (b) group is pretty flipping big. I just thought it was worth pointing out that what you call (a) group exists and should be considered, even if I for one think they're completely wrong (and I daresay, probably not very nice people!).
 
  
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