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

In the late nineteenth century, American physicians and embryologists “discovered” fetal life, and in recent years, historians of medicine have been following suit, discovering the fetus in a variety of historical contexts. Scholars have begun to explore the transformation of human fetuses into scientific specimens (Lynn Morgan, Icons of Life: A Cultural History of Human Embryos, UC Press, 2009), the history of fetal health (Robert Woods, Death Before Birth: Fetal Health and Mortality in Historical Perspective, Oxford, 2009), and the conception of fetal risk in diseased pregnancy (Leslie Reagan, Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America, UC Press, 2010). The world of the pregnant woman and her enclosed fetus has suddenly entered into the historical consciousness, prompting the question, why now?

Certainly, as a culture, Americans have become obsessed with the pregnant body in new and disturbing ways (google “baby bump” for proof of that), but the history of reproduction often develops around topics with contemporary political and social conflict. Linda Gordon’s classic history of birth control came out in the midst of birth control legislation and political debate (Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right, 1976), James Mohr’s groundbreaking history of abortion (Abortion in America, 1978) was published just five years after Roe v. Wade, and Judith Leavitt gave us Brought to Bed (1986) amidst the clashes between proponents of hospital birth and the resurgence of natural and home births. Each of these influential works in the history of medicine came at a time when their subjects were in the news, involved in national and personal struggles, and discussed, often quite loudly, in homes and government offices across the country. How then, is pregnancy the same for us in 2013?

Sara Dubow does much to answer that question in her contribution to this new trend, Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America.In this comprehensive and fascinating tale, Dubow traces the myriad of factors in the past century that have influenced how Americans understand fetuses. Tracing where fetuses have popped up in medicine and popular culture from 1870 to 2007, Dubow grapples with how the fetus has become “familiar, contested, and provocative,” in modern society. In the end, Dubow offers up an important contribution to the field, forcing the reader to contend both with why the fetus is such a fascinating topic for investigation and the deeper social tensions expressed in each conversation about the objects.

Dubow examines how fetuses have been described and utilized in a variety of sources, including newspapers and magazines, medical texts, embryological research, museum exhibits, court cases, popular literature, and congressional reports. With these, she explores the “discovery of fetal life,” the interpretation of fetal bodies, and controversies over fetal personhood, rights, and pain. Throughout it all, Dubow convinces us that discussions about fetuses are always, in actuality, larger conversations about citizenship, gender, race, and religion.

Using particular cases, such as the trial of Boston physician Kenneth Edelin in 1975, Dubow smartly weaves together fetal stories with seemingly unconnected social tensions, causing more than one “huh!” moment. The story of Edelin, an African American doctor who was tried for manslaughter after performing an abortion at Boston City Hospital in 1973 (and originally convicted), represents not only the more commonly discussed antiabortion backlash in the wake of Roe v. Wade, but, according to Dubow, it also highlights the connections between abortion and the busing controversy in Boston—both instances revealing the middle-class white fears of angry African-American Bostonians. But how much of the Edelin case and its placement within a larger community struggling with integration and state intervention in public schooling is representative of the meaning of the “American” fetus in the 1970s? Without any national comparison, we are left with a very local story that stands as, while intriguing, perhaps unique.

In many respects, Dubow has written a book that informs us...