
Foetus 18 Weeks: Lennart Nilsson's prenatal photography - Red_Tarsius
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/nov/18/foetus-images-lennart-nilsson-photojournalist
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RcouF1uZ4gsC
> Nilsson was only able to photograph one living foetus, though, using an
> endoscopic camera that travelled into a womb.

How was this approved? Inserting an endoscope into the uterus (presumably
through the cervix) is likely pretty uncomfortable to the mother and has a
decent risk of causing infection or loss of pregnancy and there is no
offsetting medical benefit to either the mother or the fetus.

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eatbitseveryday
From the article in the same paragraph:

> All the other images were either miscarried or terminated pregnancies.

Did his imaging cause these?

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jws
It does not appear so. The article says the hospital called him whenever there
was a fetus available and that he had to complete his photography within a few
hours. He had an aquarium-like tank at the hospital to suspend the deceased
fetus in to take the pictures, which is why they look like they are floating.

The single image taken in utero may have been during a procedure. The
article's phrasing doesn't make it sound like it was done primarily so he
could have a picture.

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mc32
It’s interesting to see copyright asserted in order to prevent an image from
being politicized.

It provides an interesting intersection between censorship and copyright.

So imagine instead this was a different image used for a different politics: a
picture of police beating a protestor in some place and let’s say it would be
an iconic image, but the photographer asserts rights in order to not create
more chaos and violence.... [it could be Hong Kong, east Jerusalem, Saint
Louis, Santiago,]

~~~
autoexec
I'm not sure that'd even be effective. It seems like you'd have a pretty
strong case for fair use defense in the US as the use could be
commentary/criticism or even as "education".

There are no guarantees when it comes to fair use protections, but it'd
certainly be hard to say that the photographer is losing money because people
interested in his work are flocking to view protest signs or anti-abortion
pamphlets.

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tpmx
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Nilsson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Nilsson)

He's very well-known (and celebrated) here in Sweden. His photos have been
turned into multiple popular coffee-table-style photo books here. I think we
had one of them in my home when I grew up.

And yes, Sweden allows abortions since 1938. And no, we don't tend to conflate
these two things.

~~~
ninjin
As a Swedish expat, I would like to state that history around abortion is more
complicated than “allowed since 1938”. Here is the first paragraph from
Wikipedia from the article on abortion in Sweden [1] and it summarises things
very well:

“Abortion in Sweden was first legislated by the Abortion Act of 1938. This
stated that an abortion could be legally performed in Sweden upon medical,
humanitarian, or eugenical grounds. That is, if the pregnancy constituted a
serious threat to the woman’s life, if she had been impregnated by rape, or if
there was a considerable chance that any serious condition might be inherited
by her child, she could request an abortion. The law was later augmented in
1946 to include socio-medical grounds and again in 1963 to include the risk of
serious fetal damage. A committee investigated whether these conditions were
met in each individual case and, as a result of this prolonged process,
abortion was often not granted until the middle of the second trimester. As
such, a new law was created in 1974, stating that the choice of an abortion is
entirely up to the woman until the end of the eighteenth week.”

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Sweden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Sweden)

Thus “free” abortion was not introduced in Sweden until 1974 and at least as
late as the 60s proponents of more liberal legislation organised trips to
Poland where the laws were less restrictive [2] (the best reference I could
find in English, here is a more opinionated one in Swedish [3]). The great
irony of course is that today Polish women may seek to make the trip in
reverse given the recent political changes in Poland.

[2]: [https://www.thelocal.se/20180524/the-history-of-legal-
aborti...](https://www.thelocal.se/20180524/the-history-of-legal-abortion-in-
sweden-liberal-laws)

[3]: [https://www.rfsu.se/vad-vi-gor/i-sverige/fragor-vi-jobbar-
me...](https://www.rfsu.se/vad-vi-gor/i-sverige/fragor-vi-jobbar-med/ratten-
till-abort/abortrattens-historia/60-talet-riskera-fangelse-for-abort-i-polen/)

~~~
tpmx
That's a great summary, thank you.

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bjourne
I remember seeing those phottos as a child being very confused about the stars
on the background. Thinking WHAT'S INSIDE A GIRL?

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growlist
I've never heard a pregnant woman refer to her unborn child as "my foetus".

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bobongo
As we already know, the differentiation between "foetus" vs. "unborn child"
has significant political implications vis-a-vis the degree of social
acceptability and legal codification of a woman's individual power and control
over her own body.

~~~
growlist
I've no problem with women having control over their bodies, and legalised
abortion spares us the horror of backstreet alternatives. It needs to be
there. But let's also be clear: if there weren't something horrific about
abortion there would be no need for suppression of the truth via euphemism and
beyond (showing photographs of abortion in public in the UK can get you
jailed).

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appleflaxen
It would be really interesting to know who is the individual in the photos.
They would be 54yo by now! (1965 is the year I saw in the article).

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jawns
It would be an interesting experiment, I think, to show some research subjects
these pictures and others that represent different stages of fetal
development, but without the weeks listed, and have them guess how many weeks
old the fetus is.

Then see whether their accuracy correlates with other things -- level of
education, opinion about the legality of abortion, etc.

~~~
kortilla
Why? I can’t see much of an upside there compared to the downsides of being
used by both sides of the abortion debate as fuel for the fire.

~~~
Simon_says
The upside is to score points against your political rivals and point at how
ignorant those people in the outgroup are.

~~~
wruza
In case the rivals don’t base their position on how it looks, the score may
play against itself.

