Abstract

The authors focus on IVF technology to raise profound and disturbing questions about potentiality in the context of ex utero embryo. They explore different meanings of such notion. They suggest that the notion of potential is relatively clear in the context of naturally occuring process of pregnancy. But a laboratory embryo follows no “natural course”. It cannot become a person without the deliberate human act to transferring it to a uterus. They also connect the notion of potential with that of “possibility” noticing that the possibilities of becoming a person of an ex utero and an in utero embryo are very different