Prenatal Imaging: Egg Freezing, Embryo Selection and the Visual Politics of Reproductive Time.

Abstract

In the last decade, two influential new reproductive technologies have been introduced that are changing the face of in vitro fertilization (IVF): egg freezing for "fertility preservation" and time-lapse embryo imaging for embryo selection. With these technologies emerge alternative visual representations of the assisted reproductive process and its relation to time. First, frozen egg photographs provide a lens onto contemporary reconfigurations of reproductive aging and stage a life-death dyad between the frozen cell and the embodied self, which drives treatment rationales for egg freezing. Second, time-lapse embryo imaging creates visual recordings of developing embryos in the incubator; the resultant quantified visual information can then be repurposed as a tool for predicting embryo viability. As these two sets of prenatal images reference dying eggs and non-viable embryos, they demonstrate a necropolitics of reproductive time, in which not only the generativity of new life but also the encounter with the death, finitude and fallibility of reproductive substances drives a widespread and intensified engagement with reproductive technologies.