Prenatal genetic screening: a moral and ethical dilemma

[unitacx]

However, the ability to screen unborn children also gives rise to many other options, such as the choice of termination of a pregnancy based on the knowledge of a child (potentially?) having a genetic condition. ...

...My own brother is severly autistic (note that this is from the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination, not a genetic condition, but... Had his condition been genetic, and we had screened for it, and terminated the pregnancy as a result, I would be a completely different person.

I Disagree and Agree.

1. I disagree because the MMR tie-in with autism has been completely refuted. The only relationship is that autism (a condition the child was born with) manifests itself at about the time of the vaccination series. This is not coincidence, but rather the result of the child showing personality at about the time xe develops xyr own immune system.
2. I agree because prenatal screening for autism only identifies the parents' own personality traits.

Wikipedia identifies some 25 markers for autism, but prenatal screening for autism only identifies the parents' own personality traits. (Autism is 90-98% hereditary and anything detected through prenatal screening would identify 100% herediary traits.) In other words, as a result of stigmatization (e.g., by Auti$peaks' "Jerry Lewis"-type fundraising tactics), parents are made to fear their own personalities manifesting in their offspring!

My girlfriend told me something last night that relates to this. She asked (rhetorically) whether disabled people are here for a reason. While their form of existence may be difficult for themselves and those around them, they are still capable of joy, sadness, and love - attributes which make them just as human as anyone else.

In the case of autism, we are talking about a personality type. If one presumes there is even a small scintilla of truth to the claims that people like Newton, Henry Cavendish, Emily Dickinson, Einstein, Michaelangelo, Stanley Kubrick, Alan Turing, etc. met the "Turing test" for autism, then screening out neurodiversity is screening out more than a word.

[I] Do not accept the claims made that MMR does not cause autism. There is no other explanation why my brother was an advanced learner immediately before his MMR vaccination, and then unable to function mentally immediately after it.

Hmm... did you say he was an advanced learner before he was diagnosed? All that explains is that at about the time of the vaccination, he encountered some issues. The extensive studies, and there were extensive studies, have shown no correlation. That leave the conspiracy theorists explaining that pharmaceutical companies make money and therefore vaccines cause autism. (Note that the whole vaccination theory itself had to be changed from thermiosol to vaccines when thermiosol was removed. But that's really a problem for the tin foil hat folks to deal with.)