Parental Choices and Ethical Dilemmas Involving Disabilities: Special Education and the Problem of Deliberately Chosen Disabilities

Abstract

Ethical issues regarding children with disabilities have long involved their treatment after they are born. These issues remain important, but children may be deliberately created with or without characteristics that are usually thought of as disabilities. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and related technologies that involve human reproduction will become more readily available and raise new issues about the nature of disability and treatment of it. Special educators will face new challenges when children's disabilities are deliberately created. Suggestions are provided for constraining reproductive choices and for providing special education.