Couples' Evaluations of Foreknowledge of Fetal Impairment

Abstract

The Western cultural presumption that knowledge is a right and a good is integral to current discussions of prenatal diagnosis. Little is known, however, about how couples obtaining positive fetal diagnoses evaluate this knowledge for their own lives and whether or how, they are advantaged in relation to couples learning about their baby's impairment after birth. Findings from 40 Interviews with expectant parents obtaining positive prenatal diagnoses suggest that couples both value and question the value of fetal foreknowledge and that this knowledge temporally relocates, rather than substantively alters, parental responses and infant outcomes.