{"title":"Consanguineous Marriage: Law and Public Health.","authors":"Nicola Glover-Thomas","doi":"10.1007/s10728-025-00541-2","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines the complex interplay of cultural practices, genetic health risks, and evolving legal frameworks surrounding consanguineous marriage, with a focus on England and Wales. Consanguineous unions, increase offspring's risk of autosomal recessive genetic disorders and congenital anomalies due to heightened homozygosity. The 'Born in Bradford' study revealed that 37% of babies in the cohort were born to related parents, with over 60% of marriages in the Pakistani-origin population being consanguineous. This was associated with a near doubling of the congenital anomaly risk (3% to 6%) and accounted for an estimated 30% of all congenital anomalies and 25% of infant mortality in Bradford. While Norway and Sweden have recently banned or are set to ban first-cousin marriages, citing public health and forced marriage concerns, England and Wales maintain a permissive stance. Proposed legislation, like the Marriage (Prohibited Degrees of Relationship) Bill 2025, aims to prohibit these unions and is argued to mitigate NHS strain. However, such proposals face significant human rights challenges (right to marry, privacy, non-discrimination) and concerns about driving the practice underground. The paper concludes by advocating for nuanced, culturally sensitive public health strategies-including enhanced genetic counselling, targeted education, and proactive screening-to empower informed choice and improve health outcomes without legal coercion, aiming to balance state responsibility with individual and cultural freedoms.</p>","PeriodicalId":46740,"journal":{"name":"Health Care Analysis","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Health Care Analysis","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10728-025-00541-2","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ETHICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article examines the complex interplay of cultural practices, genetic health risks, and evolving legal frameworks surrounding consanguineous marriage, with a focus on England and Wales. Consanguineous unions, increase offspring's risk of autosomal recessive genetic disorders and congenital anomalies due to heightened homozygosity. The 'Born in Bradford' study revealed that 37% of babies in the cohort were born to related parents, with over 60% of marriages in the Pakistani-origin population being consanguineous. This was associated with a near doubling of the congenital anomaly risk (3% to 6%) and accounted for an estimated 30% of all congenital anomalies and 25% of infant mortality in Bradford. While Norway and Sweden have recently banned or are set to ban first-cousin marriages, citing public health and forced marriage concerns, England and Wales maintain a permissive stance. Proposed legislation, like the Marriage (Prohibited Degrees of Relationship) Bill 2025, aims to prohibit these unions and is argued to mitigate NHS strain. However, such proposals face significant human rights challenges (right to marry, privacy, non-discrimination) and concerns about driving the practice underground. The paper concludes by advocating for nuanced, culturally sensitive public health strategies-including enhanced genetic counselling, targeted education, and proactive screening-to empower informed choice and improve health outcomes without legal coercion, aiming to balance state responsibility with individual and cultural freedoms.
期刊介绍：
Health Care Analysis is a journal that promotes dialogue and debate about conceptual and normative issues related to health and health care, including health systems, healthcare provision, health law, public policy and health, professional health practice, health services organization and decision-making, and health-related education at all levels of clinical medicine, public health and global health. Health Care Analysis seeks to support the conversation between philosophy and policy, in particular illustrating the importance of conceptual and normative analysis to health policy, practice and research. As such, papers accepted for publication are likely to analyse philosophical questions related to health, health care or health policy that focus on one or more of the following: aims or ends, theories, frameworks, concepts, principles, values or ideology. All styles of theoretical analysis are welcome providing that they illuminate conceptual or normative issues and encourage debate between those interested in health, philosophy and policy. Papers must be rigorous, but should strive for accessibility – with care being taken to ensure that their arguments and implications are plain to a broad academic and international audience. In addition to purely theoretical papers, papers grounded in empirical research or case-studies are very welcome so long as they explore the conceptual or normative implications of such work. Authors are encouraged, where possible, to have regard to the social contexts of the issues they are discussing, and all authors should ensure that they indicate the ‘real world’ implications of their work. Health Care Analysis publishes contributions from philosophers, lawyers, social scientists, healthcare educators, healthcare professionals and administrators, and other health-related academics and policy analysts.
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：
京公网安备 11010802042870号
