Prenatal screening, autonomy and reasons: the relationship between the law of abortion and wrongful birth

Genetic screening

Current approaches to genetic screening include newborn screening to identify infants who would benefit from early treatment, reproductive genetic screening to assist reproductive decision making, and family history assessment to identify individuals who would benefit from additional prevention measures. Although the traditional goal of screening is to identify early disease or risk in order to implement preventive therapy, genetic screening has always included an atypical element-information relevant to reproductive decisions. New technologies offer increasingly comprehensive identification of genetic conditions and susceptibilities. Tests based on these technologies are generating a different approach to screening that seeks to inform individuals about all of their genetic traits and susceptibilities for purposes that incorporate rapid diagnosis, family planning, and expediting of research, as well as the traditional screening goal of improving prevention. Use of these tests in population screening will increase the challenges already encountered in genetic screening programs, including false-positive and ambiguous test results, overdiagnosis, and incidental findings. Whether this approach is desirable requires further empiric research, but it also requires careful deliberation on the part of all concerned, including genomic researchers, clinicians, public health officials, health care payers, and especially those who will be the recipients of this novel screening approach.

Human Non-persons, Feticide, and the Erosion of Dignity

Feticide, the practice of terminating the life of an otherwise viable fetus in utero, has become an increasingly common practice in obstetric centres around the globe, a concomitant of antenatal screening technologies. This paper examines this expanding practice in light of the concept of human dignity. Although it is assumed from the outset that even viable human fetuses are not persons and as such do not enjoy full membership in the moral community, it is argued that the fact that these are nevertheless human fetuses affords them prima facie moral status. Thus even those who accept a liberal position with regard to therapeutic abortion, should be concerned about these more recent developments. Indeed, how we treat viable human fetuses has implications for our prospective treatment of other human non-persons and could undermine the common human dignity we all share.