Postgenomic interest in peri-conception environments and new epigenetic understandings of biological plasticity has placed assisted reproduction technologies (ARTs) in an awkward place. For instances, these new knowledges are leveraged in discussions with patients that donor-conceived children are more “theirs” than previously understood; however, the meaning and impact of gestation for kin and connection is conspicuously silent in surrogacy discussions. Furthermore, part of the normalization of ARTs is the premise that the children born from in vitro fertilization (IVF) are no different from their counterparts conceived spontaneously. However, interest in postgenomics has led to some researchers questioning the presumed irrelevance of conception in vitro, and when doing so, describing IVF children as “apparently healthy.”  

Taking “apparently” and “healthy” seriously, I explore how modes of attention—ways of naming and framing embryo potentiality—shape understandings of health and normality. I contend that understanding the politics of potentiality — and how they may emerge in a postgenomic age — requires an unpacking of various modes of attention and framing. Ethnographic findings from South Africa’s fertility clinics and emerging literature on epigenetic variation in IVF conception demonstrate how, under a genetic mode of attention, IVF clinics views “abnormality” as fated, unviable, and discardable. Exploring the possibility of answering the postgenomic questions to IVF reveals structural challenges to knowing long-term health implications. Incipient attempts within the fertility clinic at managing these questions shows various strategic techniques, such as leveraging epigenetics to marketable ends and shifts to individual responsibility.