The Ethics of Prenatal Testing and Selection

This chapter focuses on the moral considerations involved in prenatal testing and selection. It addresses the expressivist objection from some segments of the disability community, which charges that prenatal testing for and selection against the birth of a disabled child perpetuates the view that a disabled life is not worth living. Highlighting important flaws in the expressivist objection, this chapter clarifies several views on the moral permissibility, impermissibility, or obligation to select for or against disabling traits, enhancing traits, or selection tout court. Against the expressivist view, it argues that it is possible to value disabled life, see disabled lives as worth living, and nevertheless engage in prenatal testing or selection. Such reproductive choices do not, on this view, have expressive force. Threaded through the argument is a dialogue between the author and her nondisabled son that considers the force of these moral arguments within a family that includes a disabled child.