Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America by Sara Dubow (review)

With the publication of the Bancroft Prize-winning Ourselves Unborn, Sara Dubow offers a long overdue analysis and historicization of what has become a central feature in battles over reproductive rights: the fetus. Drawing upon legal and legislative records as well as educational tracts, museum exhibits, medical textbooks and journals, personal memoirs, and the popular press, Dubow traces what she calls "fetal stories" (4) in America from the late nineteenth century through the early twenty-first. In so doing, she persuasively reminds her readers the following: First, that our understanding of the fetus is not simply a product of biology or theology. Rather, it also speaks to Americans' values and politics, and because these are rooted in specific historical moments, they bring with them specific understandings of "personhood, family, motherhood, and national identity" (3). Thus in a play on words, the book's title suggests that a history of the fetus reveals as much about ourselves as it does whatever it is that occupies women's wombs. Second, she makes clear that these understandings have changed over time. As she puts it nicely: a "fetus in 1870 is not the same thing as a fetus in 1930, which is not the same thing as a fetus in 1970, which is not the same thing as a fetus in 2010" (3)—words that ring like music to this historian's ears. Third, she shows how these fetal debates extend beyond abortion rights and influence such things as workplace policies and drug enforcement programs, a crucial reminder as to the many ramifications of fetal politics. Finally, she makes clear that recent debates about fetal identities are hardly new. Instead, and in the case of this book, they have been playing themselves out for over a hundred years.

What I especially liked about Dubow's analysis is her ability in the first few chapters to capture through snapshot-like views how our understanding of the fetus and the woman whose body it occupies has changed over time. Particularly striking is her use of legal tort cases in this regard. In Dietrich v. Northampton (1884), for example, when a woman filed suit against the city of Northampton for the wrongful death of her unborn child, arguing that the ill-maintained streets caused her to fall and ultimately miscarry, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled against her, arguing that a fetus was not a distinct identity and instead a part of the mother. Notably, this would be an important legal precedent that held for many years. However, with Williams v. Marion Rapid Transit Inc. (1949) came a dramatic reversal of the long-dominant Dietrich decision. Here not only was the life of the fetus affirmed because of its viability but the woman who sought damages in the wrongful death of her unborn child won her case. By 1956 this shifted even more, with the Hornbuckle v. Plantation Pipe Line ruling establishing conception as the deciding moment of life. Thus, as Dubow argues, within a span of roughly seventy years, fetal personhood (as defined by law) went from birth in the 1880s, to viability in the 1940s, to conception in the 1950s. A similar snapshot view of these changes comes with Dubow's use of public exhibitions. For example, attendees at the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago were curious, yet little bothered, by an exhibit of forty embryos and fetuses. But by 1977, when a fetal exhibit was displayed at the Lake County Fair in Illinois, a completely new scenario was in place, and not only was the exhibitor arrested but the specimens he used were laid to rest in tiny coffins in a local cemetery.

Also compelling are Dubow's final chapters in which she describes the creation and defense of "fetal rights" by the 1970s and the emergence of debates over "fetal pain" by the 1980s. Here we get a sense of fetal stories' many ramifications. With the rise of fetal medicine in...