From “Anatomical Specimen” to “Almost Child”.: Pictures of Dead Fetuses in France

Résumé En

This chapter explores the transformation of sensibilities and practices around foetal death since the 1980-1990s in France. Biomedical imaging technologies contribute to seeing the foetus earlier and earlier as a child-to-be. As a result, the dead “foetus” seen as “waste” or as a “collection piece” has become disturbing. In response, professionals have started to develop new rituals and practices, which changed the law. They resist the association of the dead foetus to an “anatomical waste”, by the possibility of dressing it as a baby, naming it, burying it, and inscribing it in the civil register and the family record book. Professionals have also started to take pictures of the dead foetus for bereaved parents as a support for memory and grieving, different from those usually taken for autopsies. Where medical pictures show the foetus naked, with malformations visible, crude lights, and only circulate in the medical field for medical purposes, these pictures show the foetus as a sleeping child, dressed, malformations hidden by clothes. Bereaved parents used them in their grieving practices, and shared them among family, friends, public collective remembrance ceremonies and on the Internet. It contributes to the growing dissemination of the dead foetus’ specific figure, at earlier and earlier stages, in different fields than the medical one. These pictures and the practice developed in the hospital reveal the change in the foetus’ status, from an “anatomical piece” to “an almost child”.