Disability policies and perinatal medicine: The difficult conciliation of two fields of intervention on disability

Even if this is not its primary mission, with the rapid progress in techniques in the fields of prenatal diagnosis and neonatal resuscitation over the last 3 decades, perinatal medicine now plays an active role in the social treatment of disability. This activity was developed independently of new conceptions of disability which, through the impetus provided by disabled persons movements and disability studies, were at the same time the object of a broad international debate which led to classification and to new legislation and recommendations. This situation of impermeability between the two fields of intervention on disability - perinatal medicine on the one hand, public policies and social action on the other - led to practices being anchored in radically different conceptions of disability. The author sets out the current situation for the management and practice of prenatal diagnosis in France, and attempts to analyse the reasons behind difficulties in reconciling these two fields of intervention by looking back at the sociohistorical modalities of their construction. Two ideas are put forward: the State's delegation to different actors in the two fields, and the extension - ratified by the enclave of the medical institution - of "therapeutic abortion"to include foetal indications. (C) 2010 Association ALTER. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.