Introduction

Abstract

Here I provide an overview of the main themes and concerns of the book, noting that it is about the ways in which we conceptualise, visualise and treat human embryos and foetuses across a range of social and historical contexts. The book will address such topics as pregnancy, prenatal testing and obstetric ultrasound, IVF services, news and social media portrayals of the unborn, abortion politics and human embryonic stem cell research. The theoretical orientation of the book is introduced and the notion that the unborn move across and between social worlds is explained. The concept of the ‘assemblage’ is employed to describe the ways in which the unborn are configured via discourses, practices, material objects and bodies. The contents of the rest of the chapters in the book are briefly reviewed.