The 1960s are often described as the beginning of a new visual culture of the fetus in the Western world. With the publication of Swedish photographer Lennart Nilssonâs images of human embryos and fetuses in the American Life magazine and the best-selling book Ett barn blir till (A Child Is Born) in 1965, as well as the breakthrough of ultrasound in maternity care during subsequent decades, images of fetuses increasingly became part of the public sphere.1 In the late 1980s and early 1990s, feminist scholars started to use the concept of âthe public fetusâ to describe this growing production of images of the unborn and their dissemination in the media and elsewhere. They regarded this development critically because of its potential negative consequences for womenâs reproductive rights. For instance, fetal imagesânot least the ones by Nilssonâwere widely mobilized in anti-abortion campaigns.2
However, this historiography has also been criticized, particularly by scholars demonstrating that visualizations of embryos and fetuses have a much longer history.3 Moreover, it has been argued that discussions of âthe public fetusâ have largely focused on the United States, without accounting for other cultural contexts. For instance, Nilssonâs images have a complex history in Sweden. While they have mostly been associated with progressive sex education, Solveig Jülich has shown that they were used in Swedish anti-abortion campaigns before they were published in A Child Is Born and achieved their international breakthrough. Hence, the meanings of the images have shifted greatly depending on their historical and cultural context.4
More specifically, I am interested in how these depictions related to larger shifts in media representations of human fetuses. Scholars who have examined the visual culture of the fetus during the second half of the twentieth century have demonstrated how two contrasting ways of depicting human fetuses became dominant during this era. On the one hand, the fetus was represented as alive through photographs like those in American science writer Geraldine Lux Flanaganâs pregnancy guide The First Nine Months of Life (1962) and Nilssonâs images. On the other, the fetus was depicted as dead, through so-called âwar picturesââgruesome images of aborted fetuses that the US anti-abortion movement began to distribute in the wake of Roe v. Wade (1973).7 While the former type of image has been analyzed as using an aesthetic that creates a sense of wonder in the spectator and making the fetus symbolically represent âlife,â the latter can be understood as having the opposite aim: to show a particular dead or dying fetus and thereby create feelings of shock, disgust, and sadness in the viewer.8 It has been argued that these
By paying attention to these different ways of representing fetuses in Swedish television and the discussions they provoked, this chapter demonstrates that representations clearly showing the fetus as dead or dying were increasingly problematized in Sweden following the 1960s. This is similar to the development that Morgan discusses in the United States, but there are also important differences between the two contexts. I argue that at a time when âthe political attack on abortion rights moved further into the terrain of mass culture and imageryâ in the United States, with films like The Silent Scream (Dabner, 1984) airing on major US television networks, as discussed by Rosalind Petchesky,11 mainstream Swedish media denounced explicit depictions of dead fetuses. Furthermore, I claim that this distancing was connected with a growing tendency to associate this type of imagery precisely with US anti-abortion activism. Not only did Nilssonâs images travel across borders during this era, but images from the US media also circulated in Sweden. However, in the discussions around these images, one can note how the Swedish images were generally understood as âgoodâ and the American ones as âbad.â Hence, the chapter contributes to international research emphasizing the need to study the circulation of images across different media and national contexts, and to understand anti-abortion activism as a transnational phenomenon.12
The material used in this chapter was located through searches in the database of the broadcasting company Swedish Television, while the most relevant programs found through these searches were made available by the National Library of Sweden. While searches using very general key words (like âfetusâ and âabortionâ) were initially made to obtain an overview of the material, I eventually chose to focus on a number of documentary programs in which research
In the first section of this chapter, I briefly introduce the context of Swedish television, early medical television programs, and images of human fetuses in 1960s audiovisual media. The second section provides an analysis of the use of fetal images in a controversial television program on abortion broadcast in 1969. This is followed by a section discussing fetal imagery in television and in Swedish visual culture in the 1970s and 1980s more broadly. The last section offers an analysis of fetal images in three programs on fetal research made in the 1980s.
1 Early Swedish Television, Medical Programs, and Fetal Imagery
During the period studied here, television was a medium with huge impact in both Europe and the United States, which is explained by its wide reach but still limited number of channels.13 This was clearly the case in the Swedish context, as there was only one television channel between 1956, when regular broadcasts began, and 1969, and only two in the period until the late 1980s. Televisionâs spread was also rapid in Sweden, surpassed only by the United States. By the late 1960s, 83 percent of Swedish households owned a television set.14 In the 1970s, television reached almost everyone.15 This makes it a crucial medium to study when discussing visual culture from the 1960s onward.
But it is also important to highlight the specificity of different national media contexts. Television in Sweden was a public service institution, modeled on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), meaning that it had goals and ideals connected to education, democracy, and independence.16 This, of course, influenced how controversial issues such as abortion and fetal research could be handled. Moreover, Swedish television underwent important transformations during its first three decades. Not only did it change aesthetically (with, for example, black and white being replaced by color during the 1970s), but it also can be seen to have shifted in perspective, with the more paternalistic mode that characterized its early years giving way to an increased focus on social critique in the late 1960s and early 1970s.17 Toward the end of the
Medical topics became part of television programming relatively early and reached audiences through a variety of formats. Among them were various types of medical documentaries, educational programs with different physicians in the spotlight, and more critical journalistic reports. The visual character of television was exploited at an early stage, not least by many programs showing explicit scenes of surgical procedures. Programs visualizing births were also relatively common. For instance, a program on how children take their first breath after being born, coproduced with the BBC, was shown as early as 1961. Scenes like these were not confined to television, however. The relationship between television and other media, especially the press, was close, and images frequently traveled between them. Upcoming television programs were announced in the magazine Röster i radio-tv (Voices in radio-TV), where pictures from the programs were often printed in articles to raise interest, and newspapers and the tabloid press treated television programs as news to report on. Hence, spectacular medical images from television programs could often be seen in various other media as well.20
But images also traveled the other wayâfrom printed media to moving images. As discussed above, photographic images of fetuses were spreading during this period, and Nilssonâs images from A Child Is Born were reused in many other media forms, among them film and television.21 The most well-known example is the film SÃ¥ börjar livet (The Beginning of Life: A Documentary), which narrated the course of fertilization and fetal development until birth and was based almost entirely on these images. The film was aired on Swedish television in 1965 and was distributed internationally.22 Nilssonâs pictures also appeared in a school television program called SÃ¥ kom du till (How you were made), broadcast in 1966, and in the films Barnet (The child, HÃ¥kan Cronsioe, 1967) and Ett barn blir till (A child is born, Thomas Hellberg, 1974), which were distributed to Swedish schools.23 Through television, moving images of biological processes thus became a familiar phenomenon in the 1960s and 1970s, and the medium was, furthermore, one among many in which
2 1969âAbortion on Television
On the evening of October 15, 1969, a program titled Abort: Fakta och synpunkter om avbrytande av havandeskap (Abortion: Facts and opinions about terminating pregnancy) was broadcast on Swedenâs only television channel, causing widespread controversy.24 The program presented information about the Abortion Act and the procedures for having a legal abortion through voice-over, staged scenes of a woman applying for abortion, and interviews with medical doctors and social workers, but also included explicit and authentic scenes demonstrating different abortion methods. The scene perceived as the most upsetting showed an abdominal hysterotomy, an abortion method used in the second trimester, in which a fetus of seventeen to eighteen weeks was aborted through âsmall cesarean sectionâ and displayed in close-up after being put in a metal kidney dish. This scene was furthermore closely linked with a sequence in which the delicate issue of research on human fetuses was discussed. Before the broadcast, newspapers had warned sensitive viewers, but the program nevertheless triggered strong reactions.25
This program is significant for two main reasons: First, because of its explicit depiction of a fetus being aborted in the mainstream media. This was not the first time an abortion had been shown in moving images in Sweden. In 1952, there was a minor scandal when an uncensored medical film of an abortion was screened at a public debate on the abortion issue in the city of Uppsala. However, only around 250 people had been present at the meeting, a very small audience compared with the number of television viewers on an ordinary evening in the late 1960s.26 Abortion had also been represented on television. Various shows, from news and debate programs to TV-theater plays, had dealt with the controversial issue since the late 1950s.27 A real abortion procedure had also been shown. In 1966, almost exactly three years before Abort, Ronden had aired an episode in which an abortion through dilation and curettage was demonstrated.28 This depiction was, however, not very explicit.
Second, Abort appeared at a critical point in time. In the early 1960s, a substantial debate on abortion had started in the Swedish media, as liberal and social democratic youth and student organizations began to question the existing Abortion Act. A governmental abortion committee was commissioned in 1965 and was expected to present its conclusions during the fall of 1969, which was the reason for making the program at this particular point, although the committeeâs report was delayed until 1971.29 Moreover, research on living fetuses had been the subject of debate for some time, and a report to the Parliamentary Ombudsman had recently been made to investigate the issue.30 When Abort was broadcast, it was thus part of an ongoing media discussion of abortion and fetal knowledge production.
The program begins and ends with an image of a fetus in close-up, as a heartbeat is heard on the soundtrack, putting the fetus at the center of concern. Although the origins of this image are not stated, it reminds the viewer of Lennart Nilssonâs images of fetuses. Moreover, the heartbeat clearly constructs a connection between the image and a conception of life. It is not clear whether the heartbeat is supposed to be that of the fetus or the pregnant woman. If understood as the heartbeat of the fetus, it is slower than normal and must be understood symbolically rather than realistically. If interpreted as the heartbeat of the pregnant woman, on the other hand, the viewer is positioned as sharing the perspective of the fetus. In both cases, the heartbeat clearly represents the fetus as alive, by ascribing to it either a beating heart or the sense of hearing.
The inclusion and repetition of this scene create a sharp contrast to the other fetal representation in the programâthe one of the fetus aborted through hysterotomy. While the image in the beginning of the program symbolizes life in general, the other images represent a particular dying fetus. The circumstances of the abortion are never revealed, and the scene is not placed within a fictional narrative, but the context of the images renders the fetus concrete rather than abstractâwe have seen it being lifted from the uterus in the amniotic sac and placed in a dish. In contrast to the other fetal image, it is clear that this fetus has been aborted. The cinematography itself supports thisâcamera
The fetus accompanied by the sound of a beating heart in the beginning of the controversial television program Abort broadcasted in 1969.
The structure of the program is also significant. In contrast to the other abortion methods demonstratedâvacuum aspiration, dilation and curettage, and saline injectionâthe hysterotomy is placed at the end of the program, thus becoming its dramaturgical climax.31 This is followed by a sequence in which first gynecologist Irma Wright and then pediatrician Olov Celander are interviewed about the issue of abortions mistakenly performed too late (after
While this reading interprets the program as critical of abortion, the contemporary reception was actually divided. The program was described in the press as a âshockâ for viewers, and adjectives such as âhorrible,â ânasty,â âdeterrent,â and ârepulsiveâ were used about the images.32 Some reviewers, on the other hand, found the program to be balanced and expressed positive opinions about it.33 This view was also shared by a number of executives at the broadcasting enterprise Swedish Radio. When the program was discussed at a meeting with the manager, three out of four people who shared their opinions stated that they found it neutral and nuanced.34 Several commentators in the press, however, interpreted it as critical of abortion, and three representatives of the feminist organization Grupp 8 also reported it to the Radio Committee for being biased. The committee did not share this interpretation.35
The program Abort received strong reactions in the press due to its explicit depictions of abortion. In this report in Expressen, the controversial shot of the fetus in the kidney dish was reproduced and described as âa shock to TV viewersâ in the headline. From Ramsby, âEn chock för TV-tittarna.â Courtesy of Expressen.
It is revealing that the fetus in the kidney dish received the most attention in the press, not the fetus with the sound of a beating heart. For instance, a front-page headline in Dagen cited a question by prosecutor Dagmar Heurlin: âWhat happened to the little one in the kidney dish?â38 Although the aim of this question was to argue that information about the handling of aborted fetuses in general should be made public, it is still notable that Heurlin used the explicitly aborted fetus in this rhetoric. The different fetuses in the program clearly represented diametrical opposites: universal life and concrete death.
3 Fetal Images and Abortion in Swedish Visual Culture of the 1970s and 1980s
Even though the images in Abort were much questioned, images from abortions were not banned from television following this program. Some programs from the 1970s also depict abortion operations. For instance, a 1973 documentary about family planning in India showed sterilizations and an abortion in the seventh week, including a close-up of the embryo.39 To my knowledge, however, no program showed late abortions.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the practice of displaying aborted fetuses was increasingly associated with anti-abortion activists and groups.40 In 1974,
That same year, Wright also wrote an article about the event in Läkartidningen (a journal for physicians) and in a journal called Operation Sverige (Operation Sweden).42 The latter was published by a morally conservative Christian movement with the same name that had been started in 1968. The organization was opposed to abortion and the Social Democratic government of Olof Palme, and many of the writers in the magazine had connections with Swedish right-wing extremist or Nazi movements.43 The front page of the issue with Wrightâs article stated that the Palme government âallowed 30,000 living human fetuses to be murdered each year,â next to an image of a pile of dead fetuses in a black plastic bag. This image originated from material distributed by US anti-abortion activists John C. and Barbara Willke and is thus an early example of how American anti-abortion imagery started to appear in Sweden.44 In the parliamentary debate preceding the vote on the new Abortion Act in 1974, one of the Social Democratic members of Parliament referred to the front page of Operation Sverige and also mentioned that an image of a fetus had been sent anonymously to members of Parliament, as examples of what he called the âfascist methodsâ adopted by opponents of the proposal.45
By the end of 1980, a number of television broadcasts dedicated attention to a new anti-abortion group called Rätt till liv (Right to Life) and its campaign âJa till livetâ (Yes to Life). This organization, started in 1979, had published several brochures and other types of material with explicit images of aborted fetuses, among them a brochure with a translated supplement written by the
In 1985, Magasinet drew attention to the issue again. It presented the group Rätt till liv and their use of visual material such as slides and, in a longer feature, reported on the anti-abortion movement in the United States, incorporating clips from the US film The Silent Scream.50 Ever since its launch, this notorious anti-abortion film, in which former abortionist Dr. Bernard N. Nathanson guides the viewer through the video screening of an abortion as seen through an ultrasound scan, has been harshly criticized for its âvisual distortions and verbal fraud.â51 This was also the case in Sweden. After the feature, a studio debate followed between social welfare officer Ingrid Olsson; gynecologist Karl-Gösta Nygren, from the National Board of Health and Welfare; Peder Teglund, from Rätt till liv; and feminist Margareta Garpe, who had recently written the screenplay for a movie with an abortion themeâSally och friheten (Sally and Freedom, Lindblom, 1981). The only one who was positive toward The Silent Scream was Teglund; the rest were deeply critical toward it. Among other things, Nygren stated that he found the film completely untrue, that he was tremendously upset, and that he had tried to stop Swedish Television from showing clips. The general rejection of the film can also be seen in the press. Announcing the program in Aftonbladet, Lars Bjelf wrote about the âhysterical opposition against abortion in USAâ and called The Silent Scream a âpropaganda
4 Fetal Research in Television of the 1980s
When Abort was aired in 1969, it provided fuel for an ongoing debate about fetal research, which resulted in a number of investigations aimed at clarifying whether experiments were conducted on living human fetuses in Sweden. In the mid-1970s, the National Board of Health and Welfare concluded that the stories circulating about such experiments were groundless, and the debates died down after 1975.55 In the 1980s, however, fetal research again came into the public eye through a number of television programs.
The first, an episode of Magasinet aired in 1982, deals with the use of human and animal fetal tissue in beauty treatments in Europe as well as in Swedish and international medical research.56 The program is made in the style of investigative journalism, with a reporter seeking to expose secrets, but the information presented about the research is quite vague and to some extent built on rumors or secondary sources, resulting in a rather sensationalist tone. The program attracted major headlines in the press, especially highlighting a few scenes from the beauty clinic La Prairie in Switzerland (allegedly visited by celebrities and top politicians like Charlie Chaplin and Ronald Reagan), where fetuses from sheep were used in various rejuvenation treatments.57 The program also includes a studio discussion of Swedish fetal research in the 1960s and 1970s and an interview with medical doctor Agneta Philipson, who was indicted for grave robbing in the United States in the 1970sâcharges which were later dismissedâfollowing her studies on aborted fetuses to examine the effect of antibiotics during pregnancy.58
A 1982 newspaper report on the television program Magasinet with the headline âSmuggling of frozen fetuses.â The picture by Lennart Nilsson featured here does not depict one of the frozen fetuses referred to in the article. It was published without credit and originally appeared in a different context in the newspaper twenty years earlier (Bergengren, âDen osedda människanâ). From Persson, âSmuggel av djupfrysta foster.â Courtesy of Aftonbladet and Lennart Nilsson Photography/SPL.
Nilssonâs images and the reference to Nilsson made by the voice-over trigger the viewer to interpret the images as representing lifeâThe Beginning of Life demonstrates fetal development, and the images used in the film were by this time well-known, to say the least. Using clips from this filmâand not just a number of still imagesâalso adds a layer to the construction of meaning, as The Beginning of Life has an extraordinary soundtrack by composer Karl-Birger Blomdahl, which in this context contributes to a sense that the fetus is endangered. Phrases like âas long as no price is put on the head of the fetusâ also link the practice of obtaining fetuses for research to hunting and killing, and the reference to âindignant peopleâ indicates the type of feelings that the program itself is meant to evoke.
While the feature in Magasinet mainly reported on European research, Swedish fetal research again came into focus in the late 1980s. In this period, research was carried out on the possibility of transplanting cells from fetuses to treat a variety of conditions. In Uppsala, insulin-producing cells from human fetuses had been transplanted to patients with diabetes, and in Lund a research group was working on transplanting brain cells from fetuses to patients with Parkinsonâs disease.59 Here, I highlight two programs reporting on this research which display radically different strategies for showing fetal imagery.
The first is a program called Livsviktigt (Vital), which was aired in February 1988.60 The program does not show any images of human fetuses or operation on humans, but instead includes numerous scenes with images of animal fetuses and detailed demonstrations of operations on animals. For instance, the program opens with a close-up of an aborted pig fetus as the topic of the program is introduced by a voice-over. Very early in the program, there is also a scene from a pig farm in which a sow is slaughtered and the pig fetuses are taken out and put in a cooler for transportation to a lab. After a short interview with the pig farmer, a scene shows how a researcher at the lab takes out one of the pig fetuses and starts cutting it up to extract the pancreas.
A pig fetus shown in the beginning of the television program Livsviktigt broadcast in 1988.
The second program that I wish to highlight is an episode of Mellan himmel och jord aired in December of 1988.61 Here, the opposite strategy is used as
A picture showing how fetal parts are collected after a vacuum aspiration abortion in the television program Mellan himmel och jord broadcast in 1988.
This chapter has explored fetal images in television programs on abortion and fetal research aired in Sweden between 1969 and 1988. In 1969, the program Abort featured lengthy and detailed images of actual abortions, including close-ups of an aborted fetus, which triggered reactions of shock and stirred up widespread debate. This program displays two different representations of fetuses: the fetus as a symbol of life in general and the particular, aborted, dead or dying fetus. But while the program in itself is an example of how fetal images were made public in a new way in the 1960s, its display of aborted fetuses explicitly represented as dead or dying was exceptional in the mainstream media. Perhaps as a consequence of reactions to this program, Swedish television rarely showed images of explicitly aborted fetuses in the 1970s and 1980. And when it did, these images were presented in a framework associating the practice mainly with US anti-abortion campaigns and minor Christian activist groups like Rätt till liv. It is telling that, among the programs discussed here, the only one reporting on fetal research in the 1980s that did include images from an abortion was the religious news program Mellan himmel och jord. The other two employed different strategies: using only the familiar images of Lennart Nilsson or completely avoiding images of human fetuses. However, while not seen as shocking, these strategies can have other effects. By connoting âlife,â the Nilsson sequence in Magasinet is used to create associations with threatened life, while the absence of human fetuses in Livsviktigt mightâintentionally or notâfunction to stir up disturbing mental images.
Consequently, this chapter demonstrates that in the first three decades of television in Sweden, Swedish media representations of abortion and fetuses developed in a different direction from those in the United States. It thus provides a new perspective on the history of âthe public fetus,â which has mostly been examined in the US context. However, while differences between Swedish and US media are expected, this chapter also adds contradictions and nuances to this picture. In the period studied, fetal images circulated nationally and transnationally. Nilssonâs images were widespread in Sweden in various sex education materials, but were also used by the anti-abortion movement, both in Sweden and in the United States. At the same time, anti-abortion groups in Sweden adopted US strategies and used US material. But while the use of Nilssonâs images and similar ones in the television programs that I have studied were seldom criticized or even commented on, explicit pictures of abortions were generally denounced. As Mobergâs comment on Mellan himmel och jord indicates, in the 1980s an association had also developed between this type of imagery and American anti-abortion activism. Hence, to return to Morganâs
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âReligiöst TV-magasin visar bilder frÃ¥n en abort.â Svenska Dagbladet, December 18, 1988.
Santesmases, MarÃa Jesús. âThe Public Fetus in Francoâs Spain: Women, Doctors, and Feminists in the Circulation of Pregnancy Images.â In Björklund and Jülich, Rethinking the Public Fetus, 171â192.
Schönstedt, Tommy. âTittarstorm efter TV-film om aborter.â Expressen, March 15, 1985.
Seidal, Tomas. âSkakande ultraljudsfilm om abort.â Ja till livet-nytt, no. 4â5 (1995), 4.
Slattery, Kathryn. âBuilding a âWorld Coalition for Lifeâ: Abortion, Population Control and Transnational Pro-life Networks, 1960â1990.â PhD diss., University of New South Wales, 2010.
Steen, Kjell-à ke. âTV varnar känsliga tittare för abortprogrammet i kväll.â Aftonbladet, October 15, 1969.
Sten, Hemming. âBilderna i gÃ¥r de ruskigaste jag sett i TV.â Expressen, October 16, 1969.
Stormer, Nathan. âLooking in Wonder: Prenatal Sublimity and the Commonplace âLife.ââ Signs 33, no. 3 (2008): 647â73.
Swedish Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. Aborterade foster, m.m.: Betänkande. SOU 1991:42. Stockholm: Allmänna förlaget, 1991.
Swedish Ministry of Justice. Rätten till abort. SOU 1971:58. Stockholm: Justitiedepartementet, 1971.
Swedish Parliament. âFörslag till abortlag, m.m.â In Riksdagens protokoll, no. 93, 3â131. Stockholm: Riksdagen, 1974.
Swärd, Stefan. Varför Sverige fick fri abort: Ett studium av en policyprocess. Stockholm: Stockholms universitet, 1983.
Teghammar, Karin. âNu blir det strid om fria aborterna.â G-P nu, Sunday supplement to Göteborgs-Posten, November 9, 1980.
Therner, Bengt. âKvinnlig läkare som är emot abort försökte chocka tv-tittarna.â Aftonbladet, April 2, 1974.
âTV-programmet om abortfrÃ¥gan.â Dagen, October 17, 1969.
Weibull, Lennart. âNew Media between Technology and Content: The Introduction of Radio and Television in Sweden.â In A History of Swedish Broadcasting: Communicative Ethos, Genres, and Institutional Change, edited by Monika Djerf-Pierre and Mats Ekström, 31â54. Gothenburg: Nordicom, 2013.
Willke, John C., and Barbara Willke. Handbok om abort. Translated by Ingrid Pejrud. 1971. Järfälla: Salt & Ljus, 1980.
Wright, Irma. âAbortdebatten i TV.â Läkartidningen 71, no. 17 (1974): 1717.
Wright, Irma. âTV förbjöd visning av människofoster!â Operation Sverige, no. 5â6 (1974): 4â5.
Film and Television Productions
Abort: Fakta och synpunkter om avbrytande av havandeskap. Aired on October 15, 1969. Sweden: Sveriges Radio Göteborg.
Dabner, Jack. The Silent Scream. United States: American Portrait Films, 1984.
Den röda triangeln: Om familjeplanering i Indien. Aired on March 18, 1973, on TV2. Sweden: Sveriges Radio.
Kvist, Karin, and Lars Gunnar Wahl. Ja till livet. Sweden: Cymbal Film, 1981.
Lindblom, Gunnel. Sally och friheten. Sweden: Cinematograph/Svenska filminstitutet/Sandrews, 1981.
Livsviktigt. Aired on February 23, 1988, on TV2. Sweden: Sveriges Television Malmö.
Mellan himmel och jord. Aired on November 23, 1980, on TV1. Sweden: Sveriges Television.
Mellan himmel och jord. Aired on December 18, 1988, on TV2. Sweden: Sveriges Television.
Magasinet. Aired on December 9, 1980, on TV2. Sweden: Sveriges Television.
Magasinet. Aired on January 26, 1982, on TV2. Sweden: Sveriges Television.
Magasinet. Aired on March 14, 1985, on TV2. Sweden: Sveriges Television.
Ronden. Aired on October 18, 1966, on TV2. Sweden: Sveriges Radio.
Så börjar livet. Aired on December 29, 1965. Sweden: Sol-film.
Vetenskap: Nytt liv i hjärnan. Aired on October 3, 1988, on TV1. Sweden: Sveriges Television.
Archival Sources
Bolinder, Birgitta, Birgitta Svanberg, and à sa à kerstedt. Report to the Radio Committee. April 24, 1970. A12 F3:4, 106/70, SRA.
Minutes from the managerâs program meeting, October 24, 1969. A04 A6A:4, SRA.
The Radio Committee, to Birgitta Bolinder, Birgitta Svanberg, and à sa à kerstedt. Copy. Appendix to minutes nr 54, June 30, 1970. A12 F3:4, 106/70, SRA.
See, e.g., Lupton, Social Worlds of the Unborn, 33â51. For an analysis of the production of Lennart Nilssonâs A Child Is Born, see Jülich, âMaking of a Best-Selling Book.â
For a historiographic overview and discussion of this research, see Jülich and Björklund, âPublic Fetus.â
Hopwood, âProducing Developmentâ; Hopwood, Haeckelâs Embryos; Dubow, Ourselves Unborn; Björklund and Jülich, Rethinking the Public Fetus.
Jülich, âPicturing Abortion Oppositionâ; Jülich, âFetal Photography.â For more on Nilssonâs images in school sex-education films, see Björklund, Most Delicate Subject, chap. 5, esp. 283â84. For a discussion of Nilssonâs images in Francoâs Spain, see Santesmases, âPublic Fetus in Francoâs Spain.â
Swärd, Varför Sverige fick fri abort; Lennerhed, Frihet att njuta, 141â45; Lennerhed, âSherri Finkbineâs Choice.â
Jülich, âFosterexperimentens produktiva hemlighet.â
Morgan, Icons of Life; Gorney, Articles of Faith, 99â106; Hughes, âBurning Birth Certificates,â 553. Representations of fetuses as beautiful, living babies did exist earlier. Rose Holz has analyzed the widespread series of sculptures called The Birth Series, which depicted the fetus in this way in the late 1930s. See Holz, âBiological Bodies, Unfettered Imaginations.â
Franklin, Lury, and Stacey, Global Nature, Global Culture, 33â36; Stormer, âLooking in Wonderâ; Hughes, âBurning Birth Certificates.â
Morgan, Icons of Life, 29â31, 228.
Morgan, Icons of Life, 232.
Petchesky, âFetal Images,â 263. For a detailed account of the âpublic fetusâ in the United States, see Hopwood, âVisual Strategies.â
Hopwood, Haeckelâs Embryos; Slattery, âBuilding a âWorld Coalition for Lifeââ; Kuźma-Markowska and Kelly, âAnti-abortion Activism in Poland.â
von Hodenberg, Televisionâs Moment, 75.
Höijer, Det hörde vi allihop!, 198.
Höijer, Det hörde vi allihop!, 216.
Weibull, âNew Media,â 41â45.
Furhammar, âFrom Affluence to Poverty.â
Furhammar, Sex, sÃ¥por och svenska krusbär, 20â21.
Höijer, Det hörde vi allihop!, 262â63.
See Björklund, âMedicinens och televisionens ögonblick.â
Jülich, âFetal Photography,â 130â33.
For a discussion of this film, see Jülich, âTelevising Inner Space.â See also Hopwood, âVisual Strategies.â
Björklund, Most Delicate Subject, 281â87.
Abort.
Steen, âTV varnarâ; Gadd, âAbort-chock.â
Jülich, âPicturing Abortion Opposition,â 288â89.
Björklund, âWaiting for Abortion.â
Ronden.
Steen, âTV varnarâ; Swedish Ministry of Justice, Rätten till abort.
Jülich, âFosterexperimentens produktiva hemlighet,â 27â32.
In dilation and curettage, the cervix is dilated, and the physician then uses various instruments to evacuate the uterus. From the early 1960s, this method was gradually replaced by the new technique of vacuum aspiration, in which a tube connected to a suction pump is used for the evacuation instead. In saline injection, which was also a new method during this era but used for later abortions, saline is injected into the uterus, causing a miscarriage. See Ramsey, Swedish Abortion Pill, 49â50; Swedish Ministry of Justice, Rätten till abort, 39â40, 44â47.
Gadd, âAbort-chockâ; Ãhlander, âSÃ¥ upplevdeâ; Ramsby, âEn chock för TV-tittarnaâ; Sten, âBilderna i gÃ¥r.â
Jolanta, âBalanserat om abort.â
Minutes from the managerâs program meeting.
Steen, âTV varnarâ; Bolinder, Svanberg, and à kerstedt, report to Radionämnden; Radionämnden to Bolinder, Svanberg, and à kerstedt. The Radio Committee was a governmental agency between 1936 and 1994, which had the task of ensuring that radio and television companies in Sweden followed the Radio Act and the agreements made with the state.
âTV-programmet om abortfrÃ¥gan.â Flanagan, Livets första 9 mÃ¥nader.
Djurfeldt, âJag protesterar.â
P. Ã., âDagmar Heurlin frÃ¥gar överÃ¥klagaren.â
Den röda triangeln.
This section discusses some of the same material that I analyze more thoroughly in âContested Pictures of Persuasion.â
Therner, âKvinnlig läkare.â In 1980, large color photographs of this fetus were, however, published in a Sunday supplement to the newspaper Göteborgs-Posten. See âMÃ¥nga blir inte äldreâ, and Teghammar, âNu blir det strid.â
Wright, âAbortdebatten i TVâ; Wright, âTV förbjöd visning av människofoster!â
Nilsson, Ãverklass, nazism och högerextremism, 209â33.
âRegeringen Palmeâ; Gorney, Articles of Faith, 105â6.
Swedish Parliament, âFörslag till abortlag, m.m.â 101â2.
Djurfeldt et al., Rätt till liv? See also Andersson and Rätt till liv, Borås, Argument i abortfrågan.
Mellan himmel och jord.
Willke and Willke, Handbok om abort.
Magasinet, 1980.
Magasinet, 1985.
Petchesky, âFetal Images,â 267.
Bjelf, âHysteriskt abortmotstÃ¥nd i USA.â See also Mollberger, âSkräckpropaganda.â
Schönstedt, âTittarstorm efter TV-film om aborter.â
Persson, ââNi ljuger om aborter, Maranata!ââ; advertisement for Maranata meetings; Seidal, âSkakande ultraljudsfilm om abortâ; Oscarsson, ââDet tysta skriket.ââ
Jülich, âFosterexperimentens produktiva hemlighet.â
Magasinet, 1982.
Larsson, âDunderkurenâ; Persson, âSmuggel av djupfrysta foster.â
See Dubow, Ourselves Unborn, 67â75, and the introduction in this volume.
Swedish Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, Aborterade foster, m.m., 33â37.
Livsviktigt.
Mellan himmel och jord. The use of human fetuses in research on Parkinsonâs disease was discussed in other programs as well. The science program Vetenskap (Science) introduced the topic in October the same year, but wasâlike Livsviktigtâcareful with showing fetal images. In this program, there is only a brief display of one of Lennart Nilssonâs pictures.
âReligiöst TV-magasin.â
Moberg, âDystra herrar.â