Essay On Prenatal Testing

Bioethics essay- Why prenatal testing for severe birth defects shouldn’t be denied to parents

There is a belief that physicians should not recommend pre-natal testing for severe birth defects, as this might encourage parents to consider abortion.

There are two potential approaches to morally argue whether I believe this belief is justified, these approaches are Deontology and Utilitarianism. In this essay I will give an account of both the deontological and utilitarian approaches. However, I shall argue against this belief on the basis that :

1 ) Deontology ignores the effects not having an abortion has on the child and the parents

2 ) The abortion of foetuses with severe birth defects may be for the greater good from an act utilitarianism

The elimination of choice is the highest level of an intervention to limit freedom according to the Nuffield Intervention Ladder. This level of intervention is not proportional to the level of harm that the act may cause and so this level of intervention is unacceptable. This is because the harm associated with the prenatal testing procedures is not significant and obeys both Harm Principle and Paternalistic principles (the procedures do not place significant self-inflicted harm to the mother ) (

Two problems arise from this statement. The first is that this statement relies on the assumption that parents will want to abort a foetus with a severe birth defect and hence in fear of this recommends that parents be denied the choice for prenatal testing altogether. It is not fair to eliminate the right to choice that the parents have based on a preconceived expectation. The second problem is that the statement automatically appears to assume that abortion is a morally wrong outcome whereas this is not always the case, as justified by my use of the act utilitarianism moral