Prenatal diagnosis and female abortion: a case study in medical law and ethics

Abstract

Alarm over the prospect that prenatal diagnostic techniques, which permit identification of fetal sex and facilitate abortion of healthy but unwanted female fetuses has led some to urge their outright prohibition. This article argues against that response. Prenatal diagnosis permits timely action to preserve and enhance the life and health of fetuses otherwise endangered, and, by offering assurance of fetal normality, may often encourage continuation of pregnancies otherwise vulnerable to termination. Further, conditions in some societies may sometimes render excusable the inclination to abort certain healthy female fetuses. In places where abortion for fetal sex alone is recognised as unethical, however, medical licensing authorities already possess the power to discipline, for professional misconduct, physicians who prescribe or perform prenatal diagnosis purely to identify fetal sex, or those who disclose fetal sex when that is unrelated to the fetus's medical condition.

KIE: The use of prenatal diagnosis for sex determination and the subsequent abortion of unwanted female fetuses were discussed at the World Congress on Law and Medicine in February 1985 in New Delhi, India. The author rejects the contention of some participants that prenatal diagnosis should be prohibited outright, examines its benefits, and discusses the cultural and economic factors that promote abortion of female fetuses. He supports a proposal of the Congress that medical licensing authorities in each country should declare unethical the performance of prenatal diagnosis solely or primarily for sex determination, set standards of professional conduct, and, by virtue of their legal authority, discipline physicians who violate these standards.