To read this content please select one of the options below:

Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights: Challenging “Genetic Genocide”

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society

ISBN: 978-1-78756-208-0, eISBN: 978-1-78756-207-3

Publication date: 19 July 2018

Abstract

This paper examines the implications of the disability rights critique of prenatal testing on the development of genetic policy and abortion rights. It traces the reappearance of the disabled body in public deliberations over reproductive and genetic politics that use disability to frame arguments about which bodies are worthy of protection, how and why we limit reproductive choices, and what reasons women may use to terminate their pregnancies. The disability critique of prenatal testing and selective abortion finds itself in productive tension with reproductive rights politics, which increasingly features disability in both pro-life and pro-choice messages. The uneasy alliance between disability and pro-life interests has profound implications for both disability legal scholarship and the sociolegal inquiry into the role of rights articulation – and rejection – by social movements.

Keywords

Citation

Heyer, K. (2018), "Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights: Challenging “Genetic Genocide”", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Studies in Law, Politics, and Society (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 76), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 101-129. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-433720180000076006

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited