ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in this previous chapters of this book. The book explores how a particular biomedical practice – screening for Down's syndrome – is routinised as a 'normal' component of prenatal care and how the condition itself is negatively constituted in the mundane, everyday practices of the clinic. It examines how screening is organised and how it is downgraded by professionals as a trivial, non-prioritised task in three interrelated ways. The book identifies two more ways in which Down's syndrome screening is sedimented as a routine part of prenatal care. It then explores how Down's syndrome itself is constituted inside and outside of screening encounters. The book presents empirical data, extended this analysis by identifying how negative constitutions of Down's syndrome pertain to cultural ideologies around 'ab/normality' and 'im/perfection' that emerge in the social and material life of the clinic.
