Looking Within

In Looking Within, Deborah Blizzard examines the high-risk in utero surgery known as
fetoscopy, considering it as both cutting-edge medical technology and as a sociocultural
construction of patients, their social networks, and medical providers. She looks at the way
individual experiences shape these procedures and how fetoscopy affects individuals (both patients
and providers) on a personal, emotional level. Based on an eleven-month ethnographic study of the
fetoscopy practice at a community-based hospital and further interviews with former patients,
Looking Within offers a vivid picture of the sometimes conflicted, often desperate, and always
emotional lives of those undergoing fetoscopy, and challenges current assumptions about normal and
appropriate pregnancy experiences. To convey the complex reality of fetoscopy, Blizzard draws from
the experiences of the real patients she interviewed for the book to present the fictional case of
Melinda and Joe, taking them through the entire process, from diagnosis to decision to outcome. She
then discusses the emergence of fetoscopy as an accepted form of high-risk obstetrical care, how
fetoscopy programs are established at hospitals, and why otherwise healthy women consent to surgery.
Blizzard examines the use of fetoscopy in single-fetus and in twin pregnancies, looking at how
religion, culture, society, and medical science inform any understanding of who or what is in utero
(a baby? a tumor? a mass?). She also discusses definitions of loss and success, and the narratives
patients and their social networks construct to make sense of them. Looking Within will help
physicians and nurses improve the development and delivery of fetoscopy procedures, help patients
understand this new technology, and help scholars evaluate fetoscopy's bioethical, social, and
cultural implications.Deborah Blizzard is Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at
Rochester Institute of Technology.