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

Abstract

<jats:p>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.</jats:p>