Abstract
This entry focuses on the ethical issues of prenatal genetic screening. Genetic screening is a generic term that refers to a set of diagnostic techniques for sample collection and analysis with the aim of detecting fetal anomalies in utero. These different methods will be briefly described and assessed in terms of their ethical aspects. As one of the basic outcomes of prenatal screening is to offer parents a termination of pregnancy in case of a diseased fetus, and also because the sociocultural consequences of prenatal diagnostic technologies are highly controversial, the entry also briefly touches upon debates that relate to disability rights, eugenics, and geneticization.
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Further Readings
Kevles, D. J. (1995). In the name of eugenics – Genetics and the uses of human heredity (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Robinson, P. (1998). Prenatal screening, sex selection and cloning. In H. Kuhse & P. Singer (Eds.), A companion to bioethics (pp. 173–185). London: Blackwell Publishing.
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Péter, K. (2015). Prenatal Genetic Screening. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_346-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_346-1
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