Locating the foetal subject: Uncertain entities and foetal viability in accounts of first-time pregnancy

Depictions of foetuses as fixed entities possessing personhood are powerful within public consciousness, and impact upon the care provided to women during pregnancy in the UK. This article draws on interviews with 15 women in Scotland experiencing a first-time pregnancy. Their accounts demonstrate that women’s own understandings of foetal entities may at times be ambiguous and uncertain, shaped by technological interventions, embodied knowledge and emotions in shifting ways throughout gestation. Interviewees' experiences were shaped by discourses of early pregnancy as ‘at risk’, which impacted upon their emotional engagement with their pregnancies. However, biomedical and technological means of knowing the pregnant body were not always perceived by participants as authoritative. ‘Foetal viability’ was an important milestone, allowing interviewees to conceptualise foetal entities as autonomous, and in some cases as persons. Feminist research may benefit from attending to accounts of foetuses as ambiguous and uncertain, which complicate dominant depictions of foetal subjects in academic as well as public discourse.