Norms and prenorms on prenatal diagnosis: new ways to deal with morality in counseling

This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, we report the results of an empirical study on Dutch women's decisions about prenatal diagnosis. We were interested in the norms these women used as guidance. One clear nor m was found that was shared by everyone: everybody should decide for hersel f. Despite this clear norm, almost all women expressed difficulty with the choice, often regretted the fact that they had to make it and sometimes eve n expressed disgust about having to choose. These findings indicate that th e choice is often experienced as a burden, which we think should be taken m ore seriously. In the second part of the paper, we present a way to do so. The core of our proposal is to pay more attention in counseling to the mora l character of choices about prenatal diagnosis. We discuss difficulties an d possibilities in that direction. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. A ll rights reserved.