Examines two events in the second half of the 20th century: the emergence of foetal surgery as a medical specialty and the debut of the unborn patient. The author shows how biomedical work has intersected with reproductive politics to generate cultural meanings of foetuses, women and medicine.

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction to fetal matters
Breaching the womb, a history of the unborn patient
A hybrid practive, traffic between the laboratory and the operating room
Working on (and around) the unborn patients negotiating social order in a fetal treatment unit
Clinical trials in fetal surgery : making, protecting, and contesting human subjects
Heroic moms and materal environments, pregnant women on the final frontier
Beyond the operating room
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
About the author

MONICA J. CASPER is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is also affiliated with the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics. The work upon which this book is based won the 1996 dissertation award from the American Sociological Association's Medical Sociology Section.