The educated eye: visual culture and pedagogy in the life sciences

Abstract

arguable. Two other examples illustrate this point. First, the debates over emergency contraception. EC advocates argued it would decrease the need for abortion and was used only as a last resort. These arguments made sense as a way to appeal to the opposition, but at what cost? Fixmer-Oraiz explains why this is a problematic argument strategy because it “acquiesce[s] to increasingly mainstream conservative values. Put another way, in lieu of a political defense of reproductive justice in all of its forms, the science marshaled on behalf of EC access bolsters antiabortion sentiment as both reasonable and mainstream” (103). Thus: “The behind-the-counter ruling that rendered EC accessible only through a convoluted chain of command was, in many ways, the logical outgrowth of the conservative rhetoric framing that anchored EC in mainstream imaginaries” (109). Rhetorical justifications delimit policy outcomes and possibilities. Second, the response to Suleman’s octuplets. The policies made thinkable were circumscribed by a rhetoric of homeland maternity that seeks to mitigate the risk of unruly bodies, the “risky maternal body–one imagined to parent against the norms and interests of the nation” (74). Fixmer-Oraiz concludes, “Existing scholarship is written largely from legal perspectives, responding to calls for regulation and industry reform, with little consideration afforded the communicative and cultural forces that fueled such calls for reform” (61). Instead of being able to think expansively about the reproductive needs of pregnant and parenting people, the focus was on controlling those bodies. I have long followed public policy debates over reproductive health care. FixmerOraiz’s conclusions should not have surprised me and the examples should not have horrified me. But they did. The ways in which poor people and people of color are disciplined made profoundly clear the cruelty visited upon their bodies. The perniciousness is explained not just by theories of gender/sex, but also by the fact that a despicable discourse of homeland security seeps into the public debates over reproductive policy.