Fetus or Parasite?

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/woman_overjoyed_by_giant_uterine

This (rather hilarious) article is a critique of the trend toward individualizing fetuses and, through satire and humor, puts a focus back on the woman's pregnant body.  This is a dangerous thing to do because so much work of the Women's Health Movement was to remove the medical gaze from women's bodies.  In fact, I would not go so far as to call this article a feminist critique, there are quite a number of problematic comments, but it takes a useful stance for a feminist critique of the effects of looking at fetuses as autonomous beings, as beings somehow separate from the bodies within which they reside.  Treichler et. al. arue that "in acknowledging what is seen, and newly seen, we need to be equally vigilant about what is not seen, or no longer seen" (3).  I am not arguing for a simple shift of the gaze, but rather that the significance of what is (not) being spoken about has ramifications beyond linguistics.  

The Onion article says, "Immediately following a physician's examination for her menstrual cessation, 37-year-old events planner Janice Crowley told reporters Tuesday that she is "ecstatic" with her diagnosis of a rapidly growing intrauterine parasite" ("Woman Overjoyed by Giant Uterine Parasite").  By calling what the reader can assume to be a fetus a "parasite" the article emphasizes the fact that the creature cannot live outside of the woman's body.  The fetus is dependent on the mother for survival and can possibly pose a risk to the mother's health.  The parasite is called a " golf ball-sized, nutrient-sapping organism" ("Woman Overjoyed...").  Within this framework, the focus of health is the woman, not the fetus.  

There are implications for reproductive freedoms by positing a fetus as an autonomous being, which is often done in discourse and imagery around abortion rights.  "The speech that would render women speechless must be interrupted and this entails...interrupting "the visual discourse of fetal autonomy"--reembodying the disembodied fetal form or resituating the gestating fetus in a uterus and the uterus in a body, thereby re-membering what is otherwise dis-membered" (Hartouni 213).  This article does just that.  The focus is on how the fetus affects the body and health of the mother, situating it within her body, dependent upon her body.

works cited: Hartouni, Valerie. "Fetal Exposures: Abortion Politics and Optics of Allusion." The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender, and Science. Ed. Paula A. Treichler, Lisa Cartwright, and Constance Penley.  New York: New York University Press, 1998. 198-216.

Treichler, Paula, Lisa Cartwright, and Constance Penley. "Introduction: Paradoxes of Visibility." The Visible Woman: Imagiing Technologies, Gender, and Science. Ed. Paula A. Treichler, Lisa Cartwright, and Constance Penley. New York: New York University Press, 1998. 1-17. 

"Woman Overjoyed by Giant Uterine Parasite."  The Onion. 27 August 2007. 6 March 2008 http://www.theonion.com/content/news/woman_overjoyed_by_giant_uterine.