In the past twenty-odd years, in the United States, a number o different prenatal diagnostic technologies have, with startling rapidity, gone from highly experimental to virtually routine med-ical procedures. Ultrasound, alpha fetoprotein (AFP) blood screening, and amniocentesis, which may with varying degrees o accuracy detect a wide range of abnormalities and other health problems in the fetus, have become regular features of prenata care for the majority of US women who enjoy access to any form of health care.'In the context of ongoing conflicts over abortion the routinization of prenatal diagnostic technologies has arouse concern from many quarters that embryos and fetuses are being reduced to the status of commodities. Feminists have voiced the further concern that women are, in the process, being reduced to the status of unskilled reproductive workers, who produce these valued commodities through their alienated labor. In these responses to prenatal diagnostic technology, we may discern a number of related cultural anxieties about perceived threats to boundaries between persons and things-the intrusion of technology into the body, the incorporation of biological reproduction (of people) into the structures of industrial production (of things), and the specter of treating human beings as if they were mere commodities. These discussions are structured by two key assumptions:(1) that reproduction is best understood by analogy