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 norm was found that was shared by everyone: everybody should decide for herself. Despite this clear norm, almost all women expressed difficulty with the choice, often regretted the fact that they had to make it and sometimes even expressed disgust about having to choose. These findings indicate that the choice is often experienced as a burden, which we think should be taken more 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 moral character of choices about prenatal diagnosis. We discuss difficulties and possibilities in that direction.