Essay on How Future Technology Will Impact Abortion Laws

With the continually changing technology, will laws on abortion remain the same? For the last few weeks, I have been researching and building on how future technology and medical practices will lead the government to impose more restriction on abortion. The reasoning behind this is that as technology improves, the technology used in analyzing organ maturity in a fetus, which is the main factor in declaring fetal viability, will also improve. As a result, the period of fetal viability will also reduce making it only legal to do an abortion for a limited time. With the anticipated improvement in technology, incubation of fetuses will also happen at very young ages meaning fetal viability will also be achieved sooner and thus also a shorter time with which people can do abortions. Also, with better technology, scientists anticipate safer abortions and therefore, lesser instances when abortion will be legal to save a mother’s life. To illustrate all these, I used a PowerPoint presentation in my remediation because it would allow incorporating graphics like images, videos, caricatures, and emoji in my argument to make my argument more persuasive.

One of the elements I used in the PowerPoint remediation is images. Mills, in his book “Powerpoints!: How to Design and Deliver Presentations That Sizzle and Sell,” argues that PowerPoint presentations that contain images and other kinds of graphics are more captivating than PowerPoint presentations that do not contain any graphic (par 14). Each slide in my presentation has an image except for the title slide, conclusion slide, Works Cited slides, the quote slide, and the slide with a video. Also, in adding images to the presentation, I made sure that the image in each slide relates to the information conveyed in the slide and its title. Therefore, the image in a slide does not look like additional material but rather is a part that emphasizes or illustrates what the texts in the slides are conveying. For example, the image in slide six, which is one of my favorite images in the presentation, is of a baby lamb that is in a plastic zip-lock bag. The premature lamb is under incubation in an experiment done in 2017 to test if young lambs could be incubated to maturity. This image of a lamb under incubation and the information on the slide emphasize the idea that in future scientists will be able to incubate very young fetuses. The idea of being able to incubate very young fetuses means that even after the termination of a pregnancy, the government can have vested interest in the life of an unborn child, thereby imposing restrictions on abortion.

Another element I used in my PowerPoint is a video. It is part of a report by The Guardian published after Alabama passed a very restrictive law on abortion. Some of the memorable statements from the video are: “You just said to my daughter: ‘You don’t matter’” and “So why you do you all want to control our bodies?” (Durkin et al.). These words are said by a disappointed father and irritated woman, respectively. From slide two to slide ten, images are the only form of graphic incorporated in the presentation. Using a video in this part of the presentation not only breaks the monotony in my PowerPoint but also acts as a climax because the video is a response to counterarguments raised by opponents of my proposition that future technology would lead to more abortion restrictions. This video helps to show that although abortions pills may become very functional in the future as a result of better technology and medical practices, there is no guarantee that states like Alabama or the government will legalize abortion.

In slide seven of the presentation, I used a quote. Lifted from Brown’s work “How New Technology Could Threaten a Woman’s Right to Abortion,” the quote emphasizes information from the previous two slides that in the future incubation technology will be advanced such that a fetus even after an abortion would still be viable (Brown par 8-9). Paraphrasing the ideas in the quote would not do the information justice; it would be better to lift the words written by Brown as they are. The quote asks the reader/viewer to imagine themselves in the described abortion situation, which personalizes the argument.

I remediated my argument from project two using a PowerPoint presentation. PowerPoint presentations allow for the use of media such as photos, videos, emoji, caricatures, charts, and quotes. Most slides in my presentation contain images that illustrate and emphasize the information in the text. The video in slide eleven of my presentation strengthens my response to the existing counterargument by showing how the counterargument is flawed. Lastly, slide seven includes a quote, which is an essential punchline to the information is slide five and six. I placed each form of graphic strategically such that it complements the information next to it or the information on the previous slides. Generally, using a PowerPoint presentation to express my argument in project two was an interesting remediation.

Works Cited

Brown, Kristen V. “How New Technology Could Threaten a Woman’s Right to Abortion.” Gizmodo, Gizmodo, 28 July 2017, gizmodo.com/how-new-technology-could-threaten-a-womans-right-to-abo-1797339090.

Durkin, Erin, et al. The Guardian, Guardian News, and Media, 15 May 2019, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/14/abortion-bill-alabama-passes-ban-six-weeks-us-no-exemptions-vote-latest

Mills, Harry. Power points!: how to design and deliver presentations that sizzle and sell. Amacom Books, 2007.