This chapter considers how a liminal lens help inform contemporary discussions surrounding embryos in vitro and beyond using three case studies: 1) the 14-day rule, 2) in vitro gametogenesis, and 3) ectogenesis. The first case study is important as it is the principal manifestation of law’s attempt to reflect ‘special status’ on the embryo, and because it is also an example of legal attempts to deal with embryonic processes. This example is used to examine what the context-based approach developed in this book could bring to contemporary debate about the nature of such a rule, as well as its retention, reduction, or extinction. The second example enables us to consider what the analysis offered in this book says about these relatively new technologies in relation to their regulation, and the key biological and legal thresholds involved. The final case study focuses specifically on partial ectogenesis, a technology which not only introduces new thresholds, but leads us to question our existing understanding of meaningful legal thresholds, most notably birth as the moment in which the foetus/baby attains personhood. By these means, the analysis engages with the entire trajectory of embryonic development as this is driven by scientific possibilities, both current and near future.

This chapter introduces liminality, an anthropological concept, before going on to explain why human embryos may be described as liminal beings. As an entity in a state of constant and rapid change, embryos sit ‘betwixt and between’ the various realms of legal categorisation. As such, the core problem for law is two-fold: ‘the embryo’ has neither a fixed status, nor is it possible to ‘fix’ its status. Law, accordingly, struggles to capture and regulate what embryos are ontologically (as opposed to what the ‘embryo’ is descriptively). The challenge in capturing these ontologies is perhaps part of the problem; if, indeed, this is what law has sought to do. This chapter argues that an embrace of liminality - both as a state embryos are led into, and as a lens for analysing that state - fully reveals the multiplicity of contexts in which embryos are used and created. This chapter shows that a liminal perspective demonstrates that there are vital aspects of embryos - some of which the law itself creates - that the law might better recognise, namely its contextually variable and relational qualities