ABSTRACT
This chapter resists the erasure of the fetus from pro-choice discourse. Abortion providers see, quite literally, post-abortion fetal tissue in ways that challenge pro-choice/pro-life debates. They also field patient questions about, and sometimes even requests to see, aborted pregnancies. The fetal body thus becomes a body that matters within the context of patient-centred abortion care. Because providers work in one of the few settings that engages simultaneously with the scientific realities of the zygote, embryo, and fetus and the emotional significance of the fetus, they are a powerful source of strategies for these conversations. Attempts to reclaim and honour considerations of and connections to the aborted fetus in abortion care have occurred quietly for decades. A pro-choice movement that acknowledges and utilizes abortion providers’ experiences with fetal tissue will expand and strengthen pro-choice understanding of the materiality of abortion. This essay proposes that texts and images created by and for abortion providers and patients can model new understandings of the aborted fetus in public pro-choice discourse.
