In a multi-site analysis that takes the reader from place to place (from the laboratories, to hospitals, to media discourses, etc.) where the story of fetal surgery unfolds, the book's chapters lay out a well-ordered and well-documented series of arguments....The central argument of the book is that the making of fetal surgery has, simultaneously, built on and contributed to the making of the fetus, as both patient and person. Furthermore, fetal patient-and personhood has been based on the assumption of a conflict of interests between mother and fetus. As Casper convincingly argues, this assumption is a cultural artifact, not a natural fact...The book should be of major interest to activists in the women's health movement.
(Medical Anthropology Quarterly) An exemplary study of an astonishing and controversial medical specialty, The Making of the Unborn Patient is, at the same time, a lucid commentary on health-care politics, women's rights, and the very nature of personhood. By skillfully interweaving analyses from sociology, science studies, and feminist studies, Casper shows how women's bodies and choices may be "erased" by medical heroics. From the spectacle of the operating theater to the larger social dramas of our times, this is a captivating narrative grounded in careful ethnographic research, resistant to easy answers, and infused with moral concerns.
- Steven Epstein (author of Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge) Fascinating! Casper's work on fetal surgery is cutting-edge scholarship. The author uses the methods of qualitative, grounded sociology in the service of science studies and women's studies to produce a compelling, well-researched analysis of the history and social practices through which fetal surgery is currently emerging. In doing so, she provides substantial food for political thought.
- Rayna Rapp (professor of anthropology, New School for Social Research and co-editor of Conce)
