Prenatal Screening, Ethics and Down’s Syndrome: a literature review
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...
| Published in: | Nursing ethics |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Sage
2001
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| In: |
Nursing ethics
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| Further subjects: | B
Disability
B Ethics B learning difficulty B Mental Retardation B Down’s syndrome B prenatal screening |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | 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. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-0989 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Nursing ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/096973300100800408 |