This paper aims to revisit the individualization theory, especially the Ulrich Beck's one, by examining La condition fœtale written by Luc Boltanski. According to Beck, one of the aspects of individualization in the second modernity consists in, on the one hand, the liberation without reintegration into intermediate groups, which leads to an individual decision-making on one's own biography, and, on the other hand, the re-institutionalization based on the individual. Taking up as an example of these processes the legalization of abortion such as the Veil law and the diffusion of prenatal testing, this paper tries to clarify, based on Boltanski's arguments, the instance external to persons whose authority is invoked so that the child to be born can be considered preconfirmed in the contemporary society. This paper concludes that, in the individualized society, we see not the disappearance of big Other's authority, but its new appearance.
