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Images of prenatal life are part of the background that determines our normative ideas of how to deal adequately with embryos and foetuses. For this reason the interpretation of such images is an important key to the understanding of value-based attitudes and ethical arguments. The paper explores the tension between concepts of human dignity and suggestive images having an impact on the definition of the status of the embryo. Our interest in making visible the structures and processes of the earliest stages of life corresponds to the metaphorical use of originally descriptive categories, which do not just represent and classify aspects of reality in a neutral way, but reveal their character as a process with normative implications. Inspired by Paul Ricoeur’s theory of the »vivid metaphor«, the ambiguity of the visual dimensions of an ethics of life is discussed within a framework of Christian anthropology.