Ethical reflections concerning ultrasound screening during the first trimester of pregnancy

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Ethical reflections concerning ultrasound
screening during the first trimester of pregnancy

• Berit Støre Brinchmann,
• Bodø Regional University
• Norway

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• The womans right to choose foetal diagnosis
• (ultrasound screening) early in pregnancy and
  the human worth of the foetus.
• The consequences early ultrasound screening
  might have on the vast majority of normal
  pregnancies

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Nuchal translucency
8 weeks
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The involved parties

• The foetus
• The woman (the father and family)
• Society
• Norway
• The world
• The disabled
• Researchers

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Ethical reflections concerning ultrasound
screening during the first trimester of pregnancy

• The foetus

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• The object of this law is to secure that medical
  use of biotechnology is employed in the best
  interests of people in a society where there is a
  place for everyone. This can happen in
  accordance with principles about the respect for
  human worth, human rights and personal integrity
  and without discrimination on the grounds of
  genetic makeup and is based on the ethical norms
  grounded in our western cultural inheritance.

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Ethical reflections concerning ultrasound
screening during the first trimester of pregnancy

• The woman

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• The person never has something to do with
  another person without holding some part of this
  persons life in his hand. It may be a very
  small matter, involving only a passing mood, a
  damening or quickening of spirit, a deepening or
  removal of some dislike. But it may also be a
  matter of tremendous scope, such as can determine
  the very course of his life (Løgstrup, 1997, p 15
  16)

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Ethical reflections concerning ultrasound
screening during the first trimester of pregnancy

• Society

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• Peter Kemp (1991)
• The modern society does not need only science
  and technology, but also ethics with practical
  knowledge of the good life with and for other
  people ( The irreplaceable a technology ethics)

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• Sturla Eik-Nes (2000) If one asks oneself
  where we are going, it is, amongst other things,
  where new technology will take us. This is
  perhaps not just positive, but it is also a part
  of the truth. We would like to be where we will
  take new technology.
• .in some circumstances, one is presented with
  technology that one perhaps does not want to use,
  and which one absolutely should discuss whether
  one should use (pages 29-30).

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• I am talking about possible selection of all
  the genetic variations that one can completely
  well live with, despite medicine not having any
  treatment. We with muscular dystrophy, spinal
  bifida, Downs syndrome and many other genetic
  variations that are neither especially deadly nor
  deterioratory, unless medicine or society
  supports attitudes that make us deviants or takes
  away from us the right to live equally worthily
  ( Lars Ødegård).

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