A brief post today, in reference to today’s New York Times article, “Genetic Testing + Abortion = ???”

The caption for the image above reads, “BEYOND ROE New technology may complicate the debates over abortion.” But of course, the ultrasound technology depicted in the image is not the technology in question. Instead, we’re talking about the role genetic tests play in people’s decisions about whether to abort a fetus.

I admit that the art director in me understands why one would select an image that says “prenatal technology” over one that says something less specific to the headline. But it’s a bit like doing the wrong keyword search in Google. Much more germane to the topic would be more abstract images of magnified amniotic fluid or genetic test analysis.

This strikes me as a good example of the competing interests in selecting imagery to complement a complex story. Both image choices (the Times’ and mine) relate to the story, but one has to ask what the purpose of the image is: whether it’s to act as an attractor or to illuminate a story element. Both approaches have their faults, since I would admit that the images I dug up in two minutes’ of searching don’t exactly clarify what’s going on so much as they offer visual stand-ins for the techniques that contribute to the growing ethical dilemma.