#women pregnancy visualimagery

[hobdya]

The Erasure of Women’s Presence and Autonomy of Choice in Fetal Photography

The visual images presented to the mass culture when it comes to the process surrounding conceiving and carrying children have a longs history of excluding the experiences of pregnant women and their very bodies. This erasure continues to heavily contribute to the idea that (1) when a woman of any age gets pregnant, her body is not her own and (2) her body now serves as a conduit through which human life is born, regardless of the costs to even her own personal safety and life.

As Carol Stabile writes in her article “Shooting the Mother: Fetal Photography and the Politics of Disappearance,” when it comes to showing the stages of a pregnancy through photography and visual imagery, the mother is not shown as a human being whose internal organs are going through countless changes in order to adjust and go against nature by allowing a parasitic organism to live and survive in its body with no symbiotic balance (1992). Instead, women are removed from being thought of as human beings and are relegated down to being just a womb, or a safe space, for an embryo or a fetus to remain in until birth. 

Also, in order to continue to control the narrative of separating the individual woman from her reproductive organs while simultaneously giving her a motherly role without taking in consideration the lack of maternal instincts in such short time, the media helps perpetuate the idea that life begins as soon as a child is conceived as the female is “initially referred to as ‘the woman’ in the text, [yet] after eight days “she” is transformed into the “mother””(Stabile, 1992). The idea that a woman should be labeled as a ‘mother’ before she even becomes aware that she is pregnant and be forced to sacrifice her safety and wellbeing for that of a parasitic organism that isn’t a baby until much later on in the pregnancy cycle basically helps push the narrative that women’s bodies are not their own. Stabile also talks about the Time Magazine’s publication on conceiving where the photographs of the fetus, amniotic sac and placenta were celebrated as the first look into the beginning of human life itself yet the media failed to also point out that the only reason they were able to get such good photos in the first place was because the fetus was no longer a living organism and that they had manipulated the embryo itself by peeling back the placenta and such (1992).  In these photos celebrating life, the woman is never shown and her state of living as a human person, discomfort and even potential complications are not even mentioned.

In today’s day and age, women’s autonomy over their own bodies and the right to choose whether to keep or abort a pregnancy continues to be on the forefront of political and moral discussion. Photographs almost always depict fetuses as living beings housed inside the woman’s partially erased body except for the placenta as a wonder of life that starts in the first weeks of pregnancy, and these images and videos can be found literary everywhere. Imagery that continues to separate the woman from her reproductive system and puts all the focus on the embryo or fetus as the most important instead of the actual woman (who has been living and building her life as a member of society) helps to strip away the voice of women in this matter, especially when we hear of stories where women have been denied the right to receive treatments because they were with child and have died as a result.

In the article “Fetal Galaxies: Some Questions About What We See,” Meredith Michaels points out that fetal photography not only erases the presence of the woman carrying the child once it becomes an embryo or fetus, but it has also likened the wombs of women carrying the cells and organisms that we as normal people see as clots and fissures to ethereal galaxies and solar systems (1999). Imagery of this sorts puts the early stages of conceiving on a pedestal of wonder and sanctimony  which can directly conflict with the wills of the very women whose bodies are going through this process. Instead of being a natural and very personal decision that should be made by the person who will be forever tethered to the child,  pregnancy has become a socio-political agenda setting occurrence that includes all kinds of rhetoric and opinions of people who were never meant to be involved in the first place. 

Likening the inside of women’s sexual & reproductive organs when carrying a fetus or fission of cells to the wonders of nebulas and gas clouds in outer space only creates pressure and makes it harder for women to exercise their personal right to make decisions regarding abortions or going through with their personal pregnancies, and this helps to further strip women’s “full capacity as social agents” when it comes to their own bodies.

 I had the amazing opportunity to watch my mother give birth three times to my younger siblings and I witnessed every step of her journey of becoming a mother and going through with full term pregnancies. Her struggles and discomforts and bodily changes made it aware to me that even though we prayed for a healthy baby and a successful pregnancy, her wellbeing and health was of utmost importance. I realized that the strength of bearing a child is no easy feat or task and that women of all kinds perform a true miracle when it comes to bringing new people into the world by sacrificing so much of themselves to do so. As such, women and their bodies should be given the respect and acknowledgement that they deserve when it comes to portraying the process of conception and the erasure of the female presence should be discontinued through such visual imagery.