Abstract

Medical professionals routinely offer prenatal genetic testing services to their expecting patients. In theory, this testing helps expecting parents better prepare for the birth of their child: e.g., if the child will have a disability. In practice, however, such testing often leads to the termination of pregnancies that would produce a child who has a disability. Some bioethicists believe that in light of our society’s history of poor treatment of people who have disabilities, when expecting parents use prenatal testing for selective abortion and when medical professionals promote the use of such testing, they express a disparaging message to and about extant disabled people: e.g., that disabled people’s lives are...