5 ms·

Foetus 18 Weeks: Lennart Nilsson's prenatal photography

96 points by Red_Tarsius 7y ago

mc32 7y ago
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,]
- jacquesm 7y ago
  That didn't stop the Guardian from tagging the article with 'abortion'.
  - Freak_NL 7y ago
    Because the topic comes up halfway in the article. The photograph isn't used to make either a pro- or anti-choice argument by The Guardian; the tagging is just factual as it relates to the article's content.
- autoexec 7y ago
  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.
- rgoulter 7y ago
  Here's the discussion of "fair use of non-free image" on this image. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uc_Davis_Pepper_Spray_Incident.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uc_Davis_Pepper_Spray_Inc... They acknowledge that it might be copyright infringement, but feel it's 'fair' since it's a unique historical image and there aren't 'free' images which would serve as a substitute.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
> 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.
- cdirkx 7y ago
  I recently attended a presentation of a company that is planning an eventual experiment with a birth aboard a space-plane. I can't imagine a medical benefit of this, yet they say they have already been approached by several candidate mothers. People make decisions based on a lot of factors; being the first baby born in space or the focus of "the best photo of the 20'th century" has other (perceived) benefits.
- eatbitseveryday 7y ago
  From the article in the same paragraph: > All the other images were either miscarried or terminated pregnancies. Did his imaging cause these?
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    "Nilsson had set up a studio at the hospital where his subjects would be placed in an aquarium-like environment, which is why they appear to float in space. Together, his shots create a spellbinding timeline, from an egg fertilised with sperm to foetuses at various stages up to six months."
  - jws 7y ago
    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.
egdod 7y ago
This article must be mistaken—everyone told me that a fetus even at 39 weeks is just a clump of cells and that believing otherwise is a hate crime.
- nvahalik 7y ago
  They also have to be wanted.
  - yters 7y ago
    It's nice to live in the USA where everyone is constitutionally guaranteed the right to life regardless of whether powerful people want them around or not...oh wait.
- dang 7y ago
  I'm late to this one, but you broke the site guidelines egregiously here. "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN, so we don't have to ban you again?
tpmx 7y ago
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.
- UnpopOpinion 7y ago
  Cognitive dissonance at its best...
- ninjin 7y ago
  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-abortion-in-sweden-liberal-laws https://www.thelocal.se/20180524/the-history-of-legal-aborti... [3]: 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/ https://www.rfsu.se/vad-vi-gor/i-sverige/fragor-vi-jobbar-me...
jawns 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    The upside is to score points against your political rivals and point at how ignorant those people in the outgroup are.
    - wruza 7y ago
      In case the rivals don’t base their position on how it looks, the score may play against itself.
MaupitiBlue 7y ago
I’m no right-winger or bible-thumper, but if something has elbows, an asshole, and it’s own DNA, I think it’s its own person.
growlist 7y ago
I've never heard a pregnant woman refer to her unborn child as "my foetus".
- bobongo 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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).
bjourne 7y ago
I remember seeing those phottos as a child being very confused about the stars on the background. Thinking WHAT'S INSIDE A GIRL?
appleflaxen 7y ago
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).

96 points by Red_Tarsius 7y ago

mc32 7y ago

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,]

jacquesm 7y ago
That didn't stop the Guardian from tagging the article with 'abortion'.
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  Because the topic comes up halfway in the article. The photograph isn't used to make either a pro- or anti-choice argument by The Guardian; the tagging is just factual as it relates to the article's content.
autoexec 7y ago
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.
rgoulter 7y ago
Here's the discussion of "fair use of non-free image" on this image. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uc_Davis_Pepper_Spray_Incident.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uc_Davis_Pepper_Spray_Inc... They acknowledge that it might be copyright infringement, but feel it's 'fair' since it's a unique historical image and there aren't 'free' images which would serve as a substitute.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago

> 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.

cdirkx 7y ago
I recently attended a presentation of a company that is planning an eventual experiment with a birth aboard a space-plane. I can't imagine a medical benefit of this, yet they say they have already been approached by several candidate mothers. People make decisions based on a lot of factors; being the first baby born in space or the focus of "the best photo of the 20'th century" has other (perceived) benefits.
eatbitseveryday 7y ago
From the article in the same paragraph: > All the other images were either miscarried or terminated pregnancies. Did his imaging cause these?
- jacquesm 7y ago
  "Nilsson had set up a studio at the hospital where his subjects would be placed in an aquarium-like environment, which is why they appear to float in space. Together, his shots create a spellbinding timeline, from an egg fertilised with sperm to foetuses at various stages up to six months."
- jws 7y ago
  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.

egdod 7y ago

This article must be mistaken—everyone told me that a fetus even at 39 weeks is just a clump of cells and that believing otherwise is a hate crime.

nvahalik 7y ago
They also have to be wanted.
- yters 7y ago
  It's nice to live in the USA where everyone is constitutionally guaranteed the right to life regardless of whether powerful people want them around or not...oh wait.
dang 7y ago
I'm late to this one, but you broke the site guidelines egregiously here. "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN, so we don't have to ban you again?

tpmx 7y ago

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.

UnpopOpinion 7y ago
Cognitive dissonance at its best...
ninjin 7y ago
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-abortion-in-sweden-liberal-laws https://www.thelocal.se/20180524/the-history-of-legal-aborti... [3]: 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/ https://www.rfsu.se/vad-vi-gor/i-sverige/fragor-vi-jobbar-me...

jawns 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  The upside is to score points against your political rivals and point at how ignorant those people in the outgroup are.
  - wruza 7y ago
    In case the rivals don’t base their position on how it looks, the score may play against itself.

MaupitiBlue 7y ago

I’m no right-winger or bible-thumper, but if something has elbows, an asshole, and it’s own DNA, I think it’s its own person.

growlist 7y ago

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

bobongo 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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).

bjourne 7y ago

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

appleflaxen 7y ago

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).