Choice, Rights, and Virtue

Prenatal Testing and Styles of Moral Reasoning in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Bibliographic Data

ID2288643
AuthorsR Fitzgerald (0000-0002-6042-8581), Ruth P Fitzgerald (Department of Anthropology and Archaeology University of Otago), Michael Legge (0000-0002-1446-4338, Department of Biochemistry University of Otago), Julie Park (0000-0003-2763-5690, University of Auckland)
Year2015
Volume29
Issue3
Pages400-417
Publication date2015-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Anthropology Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0745-5194 • E-ISSN: 1548-1387
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/maq.12217
PMID25940875
OpenAlexW2112954976
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited19

Using a Foucauldian biopower analytic, this article combines insights from several ethnographic research projects around the moral reasoning styles underpinning debates over selective reproductive technologies in Aotearoa/New Zealand. We show that divergent or shared public, private, state, individual, and community moral reasoning styles become highly politicized truth discourses that have the potential to, and at times do, affect one another, modifying a dominant, state-supported, principal-based bioethics framework. The styles of moral reasoning that we identify pivot on an aspirational cultural ideal of the provision of choice to citizens, which is taken as an appropriate position from which to regulate selective reproductive technologies

Aotearoa · Epistemology · Moral reasoning · Sociology · Virtue · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Prenatal Screening and Diagnostics · Psychology · Race, Genetics, and Society · Reproductive Health and Technologies · Social Psychology