Book dossier

Living laboratories

by Robyn Rowland

Imagine an unborn foetus having children. In a world where frozen embryo banks and test-tube babies are presented as the ‘norm’, the culling of immature eggs from a female foetus is no longer science fiction. How does this affect our concepts of parenting and mothering? What are the ethical and moral implications of research into human reproduction? Robyn Rowland argues that women have become ‘living laboratories’ in a book that has achieved the status of a classic.