A Feminist Ethics Approach to Sexuality and Reproduction: Fetal Personhood and Women’s Bodily Integrity

In this article, I discuss the technological creation and historical/cultural production of the modern fetus through imaging technologies such as electrofotography and reproductive technologies such as ultrasound, surrogacy and fetal surgery. Simultaneously, I reveal how this technofetus interacts with biomedical discourses and practices, anti-abortion discourses and laws and practices that criminalize pregnancy and birth to transform profoundly the understanding and experience of pregnancy and motherhood. The pregnant women’s body is split into two: woman and fetus who then are juxtaposed against each other, the fetus gains personhood while the women, whose bodily integrity has been violated and her body borders become more and more permeable, starts disappearing i n t o empty space or becomes a “womb environment” or “incubator” for the “unborn child.” I end the article with a feminist ethics approach to this transformation.