Abstract
This article reviews the literature on prenatal screening for Down’s syndrome. To be evidence based, medicine and nursing have to take account of research evidence and also of how this evidence is processed through the influence of prevailing social and moral attitudes. This review of the extensive literature examines how appropriate widely-held understandings of Down’s syndrome are, and asks whether or not practitioners and prospective parents have access to the full range of moral arguments and social evidence on the matter. Highly valued ideals of justice, personal autonomy, parental choice, women’s control over their reproduction and of avoiding harm can all tend towards negative rather than neutral approaches to Down’s syndrome. This article considers how ethics and prenatal screening policies and practice that take greater account of social evidence of disability could use moral arguments that inform rather than determine the choices of people who use prenatal services.
Subject
Issues, ethics and legal aspects
Cited by
16 articles.
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1. Ethics of Screening;International Encyclopedia of Public Health;2025
2. Key Ethical Issues in Prenatal Genetics;Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinics of North America;2018-03
3. Patients’ Knowledge of Prenatal Screening for Trisomy 21;Journal of Genetic Counseling;2017-07-14
4. Expanding Use of cfDNA Screening in Pregnancy: Current and Emerging Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues;Current Genetic Medicine Reports;2017-02-11
5. Ethics of Screening;International Encyclopedia of Public Health;2017