June 16, 2004
NOT PERSONS?:
In Fetal Photos, New Developments (MARC SANTORA, May 17, 2004, NY Times)
"I'm going to cry."Limor Fronimos, 25 weeks pregnant, was taking part in one of the stranger and more controversial outgrowths of the ultrasound industry - the high-resolution, artistic photography of fetuses - and was overwhelmed by what she was seeing on the video monitor.
For a few hundred dollars, expectant mothers can get sepia-toned prints to give to their families and friends, a CD-ROM with the pictures so they can be e-mailed around the world and a DVD with a 20-minute video of the fetus squirming in the amniotic sac.
In an age of medical marvels, nothing would seem out of the ordinary about this experience, except that these ultrasounds are not being performed in doctors' offices or medical clinics, but at fetal photo studios that have been opening across the country in recent years and arrived in Manhattan in March.
Mrs. Fronimos, 29, was a client at A Peek in the Pod, just off Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side, in a neighborhood of trendy maternity and children's stores. The top-of-the-line ultrasound package at the studio, including prints, CD-ROM and DVD, costs $295.
But along with keepsake pictures, the new studios have generated a good deal of concern. They are not subject to regulation, and anyone with an ultrasound machine - the best cost upwards of $150,000 - can open up shop.
The real objection is more likely to the humanization of the "clump." Posted by oj at June 16, 2004 4:49 PM
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I agree. I think the more these becomes available and people actually see what they are killing, the less likely they will be to have abortions.
Posted by: Rick T. at June 16, 2004 6:27 PMThree women to whom I was close were huddled together, oohing and aahing over a sonogram image. (One of the women was pregnant.) As I passed, I chirped, "Don't forget: That's just a meaningless blob of protoplasm." Oh, gosh, were they mad. Livid! (I should have mentioned that all three were proudly "pro-choice.")
Jay Nordlinger, Impromptus, National Review, 6/15/04)
Posted by: David Cohen at June 16, 2004 7:11 PMIt would be instructive to hear Judge Hamilton's view of these 'images'. And those of Justices Souter, Stevens, Ginsberg, Breyer, O'Connor, and Kennedy.
Black is white. Life is death. I read it in a law journal.
Posted by: jim hamlen at June 16, 2004 9:38 PMRandom, Rick --
Wait a while, SCOTUS will declare these and perhaps all sonograms as being 'kiddy porn' and therefore unconstitutional.
(This will of course start in the 9th circuit court.)
Posted by: Uncle Bill at June 17, 2004 10:44 AMUncle Bill, I thought I had the fundamental and unalienable right to make and possess kiddie porn as long as I didn't abuse any actual, live kids to make it. (You know, a cartoon depicting a little boy sodomizing a goat is part of the core of free speech, but criticizing my Congressman in October isn't.) But everybody knows there aren't any real children in prenatal sonograms, nope, nosireebob, not here...
Posted by: Random Lawyer at June 17, 2004 1:40 PM
Some enterprising state government ought to require that every abortion clinic in the state show its patients half an hour of live ultrasound. Betcha that cuts down on late term abortions.
Posted by: Random Lawyer at June 16, 2004 5:16 PM