"Time with Babe": Seeing Fetal Remains after Pregnancy Termination for Impairment

Some North American hospitals now offer parents the opportunity to see, hold, and photograph fetal remains after pregnancy loss. I explore the social, material, and interpretive strategies mobilized to create this fetal visibility after second trimester-induced abortion for fetal anomaly. My analysis examines both the discursive framing of fetal remains in practice guidelines on pregnancy loss and the responses of a group of Canadian women to being offered "time with babe." I show that while guidelines tend to frame contact with fetal remains as a response to women's desires to see their baby and to feel like mothers, women's experiences of this contact were shaped by more diverse wishes and concerns as well as by specific abortion practices and practitioner comments and actions.