Zooming Out: Solidarity in the Moral Imagination of Genetic Counseling

Prenatal genetic testing allows potential parents to screen for and diagnose an everincreasing number of conditions. However, because there is no treatment for the majority of currently detectable conditions, the information opens the door to selective termination, which some in the disability community consider morally problematic. Genetic counselors, and the other genetics professionals who offer these tests, have a professional obligation to help each client1 navigate the implications of genetic information and to make a decision, which, while legally considered a personal and private decision, inevitably spills over into the political realm. In this paper, I begin by giving an overview of the nature of the tension between the disability community and the genetic counseling profession. However, my goal is not to side with one group or the other. Instead, I would like take a step back and consider the lens through which the tension between the two communities has been viewed, namely, in terms of the principle of autonomy. While I do not intend to question the importance of reproductive freedom, I would like to ask whether the language of choice and freedom fully captures what is going on here. In brief, I argue that the principle of autonomy as the primary framework for understanding both the problem and potential responses to the problem, is insufficient, and that looking to the relational underpinnings of autonomy may shed greater light on