UCLA

With state governments blocking access to abortion across the United States, coupled with the risk of Roe v. Wade being overturned and exacerbated by the historical criminalization of pregnant people for solitary positive drug tests, now is the time to scrutinize society’s complicated perception of reproduction and life. Through a consideration of fetal ultrasounds on YouTube, this dissertation is concerned with the broadcasting of fetal ultrasounds and how this broadcasting of ultrasounds by users on YouTube contributes to the strengthening of common political discourses around fetal personhood and the linking of ultrasounds to notions of affect.

I contextualize ultrasounds as a visualizing technology mapping their lineages to World War II submarine warfare and diagnostic medicine. Through a visual analysis of fetal ultrasounds on YouTube, I present how collective ideas of fetal personhood are co-produced by users and commenters with these videos often located indirectly in political debates regarding abortion. Finally, I pivot from the fetal ultrasounds’ visuality towards their sound to ground the powerful claim of “fetal heartbeats.” I do so through at-home non-medical fetal dopplers, a monitoring device that uses ultrasound but does not provide a visual image. I claim that fetuses continue to be highlighted despite the absence of a visual spectacle. Additionally, I read fetal dopplers through a more extensive biopolitical history of Black visibility and invisibility, maternal-fetal conflict, and discourses of care with historical lineages to 1662 Partus Sequitur Ventrem, the 1986 War on Drugs, 1990s criminalization of pregnant Black women, and modern fetal heartbeat legislation. Moreover, employing theories from critical digital studies and feminist science and technology studies, this dissertation highlights how existing mechanisms that empower fetuses and disempower pregnant people and directly contribute to the evolving nature of fetal rhetoric can be found on video and image sharing platforms like YouTube.