ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two key issues in bioethics: the beginning of life and the end of life. The empirical evidence shows that disabled people generally enjoy a quality of life which is as good as, or sometimes better than, that of non-disabled people. Within bioethics, disability has tended to be seen in predominantly medical terms. Disability has predominantly negative associations: lack, pain, limitation, suffering, death. The other stakeholders in the diagnosis debate are disabled people. Central to the disability rights support for assisted dying is a differentiation between people living with disability, and people in end stage of terminal illness. There are many examples of criticism by disabled people and organisations of trends towards prenatal diagnosis. This chapter explores the lived experience of prenatal diagnosis and shows how screening and testing can be a mixed blessing, rather than simply beneficent. Bioethical and biomedical versions of prenatal diagnosis also fail to account for the complexity and vulnerability of human embodiment.
