40. Disability Equality and Prenatal Testing

La selección genética preimplantacional frente a la crítica del modelo social de la discapacidad

“…Quizás la crítica más importante y con mayor resonancia vinculada a los intereses de las personas con discapacidad es el argumento expresivo, que puede ser formulado de la siguiente manera: el uso de DGP para evitar el nacimiento de nuevas personas con algún tipo de discapacidad envía un mensaje a aquellas personas con dicho tipo de discapacidad actualmente existentes cuyo contenido es que ellas no deberían haber nacido y que sus vidas en algún sentido valen menos que las vidas de las personas sin discapacidad. Ese mensaje resuena particularmente en personas que viven con una discapacidad que el DGP está dirigido a detectar (Asch 2019;Parens y Asch 2003).…”

Opening Pandora's box?: ethical issues in prenatal whole genome and exome sequencing

“…For others, the possibility of such interventions will raise broader issues about the value of diversity, disability and questions about the importance of avoiding overly reductive conceptualisations of the ‘good life’. . Malek suggests that there is a difference between the wish to offer a child the best possible future and a discriminatory attitude towards existing persons with disabilities.…”

Harms to “Others” and the Selection Against Disability View

“…For, when it can be shown in a particular case that selection for disability is liable to involve added costs that are not justified by appeals to the claims of justice of the parents themselves or made irrelevant by the production of other benefits, it must be shown, too, that these extra costs are not themselves the result of injustice. How we respond to this question is determined by the extent we hold disability itself to be maladaptive—inherently limiting “the range of opportunity open to the individual in which he may construct his plan of life or conception of the good” ( Daniels, 1985 , 27)—socially constructed—“a result of a failure to account for everyone when designing physical, economic and social institutions” ( Asch, 2003 , 319)—or a mixture of the two. For, should we subscribe to the former view, it is understandable that we might hold those who choose to bring into the world lives liable to impose a burden on other members of society morally and financially responsible for their choices.…”

“… 1. Those who make such arguments have suggested variously, although this is by no means an exhaustive list, that selective reproduction will be morally impermissible in all/the vast majority of situations in virtue of the special moral status of the human embryo/fetus (see, e.g., Singer, 2011 , 125, for an exploration of the classic pro-life argument and Marquis, 1989 , for an example of the potentiality argument for the full moral status of the human embryo), that selective reproduction is offensive to those whose traits are selected against—sending out the message that they are of less value than those with different traits (for an example of this argument, see Asch, 2003 ), that selection treats our prospective children as a means to an end and is thus incompatible with the virtues one often associates with parenthood (see, for example, Parens and Asch, 1999 . and Vehmas, 2001 ), and that the availability of such technologies may serve to degrade both the parent–child relationship and common conceptions of justice and the relationships that obtain between different members of society (see e.g., Sandel, 2007 , 49–50).…”