ABSTRACT
Choice and information have served as the cornerstones of the women’s health and the reproductive rights movements. Reproductive technology is heralded for its choice-giving capacity. Fetal monitors, belts to go around the pregnant belly and electrodes to screw into the fetal head during labor, are a piece of reproductive technology whose sole stated purpose is to bring more information, to enable more and better choices. Both the medical monitoring and management of labor, and the use of contraception and abortion, are very well-established aspects of reproductive technologies; it is just the specifics which keep changing, as newer techniques, machinery and chemicals get introduced. Amniocentesis and sonography are the technologies which provide the information to make this new set of reproductive choices possible. Sonography, the use of sound waves, allows the visualization of the fetus in utero, and the detection of gross anatomical deformities.
