This article offers a comparative analysis of experimental fetal surgery and fetal tissue
research. The author argues that fetuses are positioned differently across each set of
practices, with significant implications for actors in these domains. By empirically
charting the ways in which humanity is or is not attributed to fetal work objects, the
author's argument challenges contemporary debates in science studies that tend to
conceptualize human and nonhuman in dualistic terms. This analysis instead shows the
heterogeneous attribution of these categories, as well as the spaces, margins, and
positions, which constitute them as distinct.
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