Who Gets Born? Pre-birth Testing Choicebook

This Choicebook aims to encourage deliberative dialogue

This Choicebook aims to encourage deliberative dialogue about pre-birth testing. Pre-birth testing, together with ante natal care, have become a routine part of helping ensure the health of the baby and the mother.

However, the outcomes are not always straightforward. Pre-birth tests such as blood tests, scans, amniocentesis or pre-implantation genetic diagnoses can detect conditions such as Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis and spina bifida. These conditions can have a devastating effect on the child and the parents.

People have very different views about pre-birth testing and whether or not there should be any limits to what people should be allowed to do; or even if we should have the right to destroy an embryo or terminate a pregnancy if the results of a test show there is some abnormality.

Deliberating on an issue means people coming together as informed citizens and taking responsibility for making choices about how they want to live, how they want to act together, and how they want their government to function. People come together and carefully weigh up each perspective, looking for what is positive about that point of view, its drawbacks, the trade-offs they are prepared to make to take a particular action(s), and what the consequences might be of taking such action(s).

The Bioethics Council wishes to thank all those people who took part in the framing exercises in August 2007. This Choicebook reflects their hard work and commitment.

More information about pre-birth testing is available through our web site at www.bioethics.org.nz

A web-based deliberative dialogue is to be held from late October 2007 at http://nzbioethics.dialoguecircles.com/

We invite you to join this discussion and let your voice be heard.

Dr Martin Wilkinson
Chair
Toi te Taiao; the Bioethics Council

Thanks to Valerie Bos for the use of her paintings on pages 10, 11, 15, 23 and 25.

Pre-birth testing

Approach one: ‘My choice my right’

Approach two: ‘Life is a gift’

Approach three: ‘Tangata whenua’

Approach four: ‘It’s about information, knowledge and the public's involvement’

So what’s the issue, what can be done, and what are the arguments against each approach?

Glossary

Toi te Taiao: the Bioethics Council

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