ABSTRACT
In the last decades, we have witnessed a proliferation of the production and circulation of what has been called the 'facts of life' context of pregnancy. This chapter focuses on prenatal risk assessment(PRA) for Down's syndrome as one such site of knowledge production. Drawing on specific case studies, we argue that facts of foetal life are not simply pre-existing entities, existing out there, waiting to be represented visualized and quantified by doctor to patient. Finally, we want to draw attention to possible implications for the ethical framework that currently regulates PRA. In the final section of the chapter, we will return to this point. In the following section we want to look at the practices through which a visual representation of the foetus is produced, and the interpretative procedures, which make the produced image meaningful to the actors involved.
