Watching embryos: exploring the geographies of assisted reproduction through encounters with embryo imaging technologies

Abstract

ABSTRACT New biomedical imaging technologies, which enable embryologists to observe the development of human embryos, are presenting new possibilities for the lived geographies of assisted reproduction. More specifically, these technologies produce novel visual representations of in vitro embryos that can be shared with fertility patients as a way to involve them in their treatment, and we explore how this imagery circulates in places and relationships beyond the fertility clinic with diverse effects. Drawing on empirical material from interviews with both patients and partners undergoing in vitro fertilisation (IVF) in the UK, this article critically examines how encounters with embryo imagery create spatially and temporally extended as well as intimate relationships between people and a particular kind of reproductive bioinformation. Through this, we advance geographical approaches to embodied encounters with assisted reproductive technologies, biomedicine and bioinformation, as well as social and cultural conceptualisations of the mobilities of extracorporeal embryos and their visual representations. Patients and partners’ engagements with a new form of reproductive bioinformation provide important insights into the making of new reproductive knowledge and experience.