Abortion is a visible and relatively accessible place for ordinary Americans to grapple with the philosophical, moral, humanist, and religious issue of personhood. Medical technology has contributed significantly to this grappling. In the instance of ultrasound technology, this medical technology enables the ability to see, feel and interact with visual images in this debate, that are such a predominant force in western culture. Communication theorist and professor Celeste Condit states,"Images intensify commitment, motivate the believers to work for the cause, and give them reason to believe that they can persuade others. When Pro-Life rhetors talk about why they believe as they do, the role of the photographs and films becomes quite clear" (80).

Through these images, metonomy is used to equate a fetus with a human. The whole point of these images used in Pro-Life discourse is to show that a fetus is human life and therefore, another comparison is set in place: that of abortion being murder. Within this debate, "The creation of a simple label- The blastoclayst, embryo, fetus, viable baby were reduced to a single entity through the creation of a single vision fo the "unborn baby". When pictures of younger fetuses appeared , they were either prominently labeled "baby," surrounded by older fetuses and by babies, or accompanied by text that attributed ababy-like features to them (e.g., thumb-sucking, heartbeat, brain activity) "Even if developing humans at all stages were reduced to a single rhetorical image, the meaning conveyed by that image would not have been sufficient to support the pro-Life persuasive claim unless it was also metaphorically interpreted as essentially identical with a full human being. This layer of meaning was added metaphorically" (83). Other significant visual methodologies at play in this debate are synechdoche, ideology, institutional apparatus, auteur theory and metaphor, among others.