Should Doctors Require Prenatal Testing?

Abortion’s legalization through Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade, has allowed for one in three pregnancies to end in abortion. This means that 1.5 million abortions are performed in the United States each year (Flanders 3). It ranks among the most complex and controversial issues, arousing heated legal, political, and ethical debates. The modern debate over abortion is a conflict of competing moral ideas and of fundamental human rights: to life, to privacy, to control over one's own body. Trying to come to a compromise has proven that it one cannot please all of the people on each side of the debate.

In some ethical and legal respects a pregnant woman and her fetus can be considered separate. Both the woman and the fetus are ordinarily affected by the well-being of one another for as long as each of them live. The ethical and legal issues are challenged deeply in cases where the well-being of the fetus and the mother appear to be in conflict. Our society struggles with identifying cases where the pregnant woman’s interests and/or behaviors might put her fetus at risk. Criminal and/or civil commitments should be used to bar pregnant women from exposing their fetuses to risk.

The field of Bioethics has developed over the past thirty years as a product of

Bioethics is also the study of what is ethical or moral in biological research and applications especially medicine.

Proponents of punishing pregnant women, who put their fetuses at risk, have highlighted some pertinent legal and ethical issues. One is that a viable fetus (fetus after 27 weeks gestation) has certain rights and privileges. They are of the opinion that as soon as the fetus is viable and can survive independently from it mother, it becomes a

What is bioethics? According to Michigan State University, School of Medicine, it is defined as an activity that is shared, reflective, examination of ethical issues in healthcare, health science and health policy. It is the discussion of the information that should be given to the patient and the patients right to refuse or accept that information. It involves doctors and patients but scientists and politicians and the general public. It has brought significant change but also raises new questions. In any event the topic of discussion and the purpose of this term paper is to explore biology and the ethics of this natural science. The topic of this paper is Physician Assisted Suicide; it has been widely debated amongst doctors, patients, politicians and law makers. The question that will be explored is the fact of if this is wrong or right to do. The purpose of physician assisted suicide, as well as how humans manipulated this phenomenon, and the controversy of this topic, amongst other prevalent information will be discussed. There will be some court cases that will be mentioned to prove when it should be used and when it should not be used. I will attempt to provide my position to this topic, although it may be hard to do so. Laws in which PAS can be done will be mentioned as well as other alternatives to it. I hope and pray this is sufficient.

As witnessed in our present day , and in the history of humanity bioethics is something introduced to society. From emerging the practices in medicine and biology. One case that indicated in the the history is the Nazi human experimentation that included the exploratory of medicine on the minority of jews , jehovah witnesses , and other minority groups in which refused to assimilate with the germans .

Medical professionals today can screen for certain genetic traits (genetic diseases and sex) with in vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic diagnosis to obtain a healthy child, and reproductive technology continues to improve. With this in mind, the question arises whether sex selection is ethical. Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at Oxford University, argues that sex selection is moral, based on his ethical principle of Procreative Beneficence: that “couples (or single reproducers) should select the child, of the possible children they could have, who is expected to have the best life, or at least as good a life as the others, based on the relevant, available information” [Savulescu 1]. Savulescu claims

Prenatal testing detects changes in a fetus’ genes or chromosomes before birth. This specific type of testing during pregnancy can help parents make decisions about a pregnancy, but cannot identify all possible disorders or birth defects. (Campbell, Reece, Mitchell). It is one of the most basic genetic tests. Another form of genetic testing done before birth is called preimplantation testing, or preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Its purpose is to detect genetic changes in embryos that were created outside of the body, such as in-vitro fertilization, where eggs are fertilized outside of the body. In this case, cells are taken from these embryos and tested for specific genetic changes that are indicative of a genetic disorder. Only

Of all the legal, ethical, and moral issues we Americans continuously fight for or against, abortion may very well be the issue that Americans are most passionate about. The abortion issue is in the forefront of political races. Most recently the “no taxpayer funding for abortion act”, has abortion advocates reeling. Even though abortion has been legal in every state in the United States since the monumental Supreme Court decision, “Roe v Wade”, on January 22, 1973; there are fewer physicians willing to perform abortions today than in 2008. (Kraft) At the heart of the ethical dilemma for many in the medical profession is the viability of the fetus. And just to make this whole dilemma more confusing, according to the United States

The principles of ethics can assist in finding a middle ground on reproductive technologies by forcing the healthcare provider to consider first the patient and their well-being above all else, yet keeping in consideration the benefits and morality of the care they are giving. More often than not, there are more than two sides to every argument, especially when it comes to the latest reproductive technologies. “To obtain justifiable resolutions of these

In this paper, I will discuss this dilemma and apply The Moral Model. This model is an ethical decision-making tool that assists to explain the moral principles that deem this topic controversial. I will discuss the ethics specifically about selective reduction as a result of multiple gestations related to in-vitro fertilization.

Bioethics is a relational field of science that deals with the intersection of biological scientific practices and ethical concerns raised by these procedures. Genetic engineering is a relatively new scientific practice and is greatly concerned with the field of bioethics, as it raises many worries revolving around the blurred moral lines of manipulating a person’s genome.This method of engineering the human genome originated from the idea that cancers and other terminal diseases could be cured by essentially switching off harmful genes that could code for these ailments. Moreover, the origin of moral and even financial concerns with genetic engineering can be traced to the potential marketing of gene manipulation as a commercial product where parents can choose what genes to alter in their unborn child, in an order to produce a super baby. Finally, a great deal of research, as well as ethical protests, have been put into potentially altering a person’s lifespan to yield humans who exhibit the ability to live much longer lives than currently possible. Genetic engineering is a dangerous and morally wrong scientific procedure that if pursued will bring harm to the general population and destroy the ethical boundaries of science within bioethics and scientific research.

Bioethics is multidisciplinary. It blends law, philosophy, insights from the humanities and medicine to bear on the the complex interaction of human life, science, and technology. Although its

Ethics, in medicine, is described as applying one’s morals and values to healthcare decisions (Fremgen 2012). It requires a critical-thinking approach that examines important considerations such as fairness for all patients, the impact of the decision on society and the future repercussions of the decision (Fremgen 2012). According to Fremgen (2012), bioethics concerns ethical issues discussed in the perspective of advanced medical technology. Goldman and Schafer (2012) state bioethical issues that arise in medical practice include antibiotics, dialysis, transplantation, intensive care units, issues of genetics, reproductive choices and termination of care. In clinical practice the most common issues revolve around informed consent, termination of life-sustaining treatments, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, and conflicts of interest (Goldman, Schafer 2012).