Fluctuations and remaining bonds: Challenging undynamic fetal personhood through women's experiences of early pregnancy endings in England

Women's subjective relationship with their pregnancy is central in understanding fetal personhood, a relationship that is theirs to assemble and disassemble. A rigid perception of personhood as either present or absent is problematized, instead revealing an evolving approach. Based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork in an NHS Trust in England the paper explores women's experiences of personhood during pregnancy, pregnancy endings, and their aftermath. It shows personhood is neither fixed, nor constant, but rather oscillates; revealing that dichotomous understandings of personhood based on a specific moment, and which are unidirectional, are flawed. Women's experiences add further evidence that personhood is not biological and is not always tied to the fetus or fetal body. Instead, it is social relations including an imagined future that confers personhood with these sometimes continuing after the pregnancy ending. Yet, social relations that bring a fetus into being may also unmake it.