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Reframing and Grounding Nonhuman Agency

What Makes a Fetus an Agent

University of California, San Francisco

Agency: The power of actors to operate independently of the determining constraints of social structure. The term is intended to convey the volitional, purposive nature of human activity as opposed to its constrained, determined aspects.

—Harper Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 1991

The concept that the fetus is a patient, an individual whose maladies are a proper subject for medical treatment as well as scientific observation, is alarmingly modern. It was not until the last half of this century that the prying eye of the ultrasonographer rendered the once opaque womb transparent, letting the light of scientific observation fall on the shy and secretive fetus.

—M. R. Harrison

"The Fetus as a Patient: Historical Perspective"

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