ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the involvement of states in the making and stabilization of vital phenomena as bio-objects. It argues that states help make bio-objects by enacting laws and regulations and by entrusting authorities with the implementation of these laws and regulations. The chapter aims to use the uneven regulatory path of Italian in vitro fertilization (IVF) embryos to start to think through the relationship between life and politics, and between changing forms of life and changing forms of politics. Assisted reproduction in laboratories was disentangled from natural reproduction in bedrooms and IVF embryos disentangled from fetuses. Even those members of Parliament who argued for restrictive embryo regulations did not dare to re-arrange the rights and freedoms of women over the embryos and fetuses in their mother's wombs, and hence in their natural space; yet they did reorder the rights and entitlements of women and prospective parents over those embryos out of space that were dwelling in Italian laboratories.
