Please provide an ethical case study analysis.

Some guidance: 1. Only briefly discuss the scenario, highlighting material facts. 3. Clearly tell the ethical problem (issue spotting). 4. Discuss what ethical alternatives are considered (e.g. autonomy vs beneficence).

5. Discuss the selected solution and the reasons for the decision. 6. Discuss, when relevant, how the solution pertains to applicable law. 7. Conclusion

Only 1-1.5 pages single spaced (no more than 2 pages of analysis!). Specific evidence from the readings is necessary in the analysis.

SETTING PUBLIC POLICY FOR PRENATAL TESTING

Suppose you are a state leg:islator and a proposal has come before your committee on health affairs that the state investigate the benefits ofa program to ensure that all pregnant wonnen receive, as a matter of routine prenatal

care, the opportunity to submit to a blood test that would deter111ine with a fairly high degree of accuracy tliat the fetus they are carrying has Down syn- drome. You know that in 1974 a U.S. government analyst calculated that a $5 billion investment by the federal government over 20 years to encourage voluntary testing would (assurriing a reduction in the births of children with Down syndrome of 50 percent) result in savings of more than $18 billion.

(Buchanan, supra, at 55.) You imagine state savings could also be significant if fewer children with Down syndrc,me were born .in the state, especially because the proposal imposes very little icost to the state. The state would not pay for

the tests, but would simply require i1re physicians in the provision of prenatal care

to inf'orm women of the availability of the test a11d to obtain their signatu1e on a form documenting their decision to accept or refttse the test. Would you be in favor of purst1ing the proposal? Would it affect your opinion if the proposal were being sponsored by a fellow legislator who had just given birth to a child with Down syndrome and argues that she should have been told by her doctor of the possibility of learning about her child's condition in utero in time to abort?