Non-invasive prenatal genetic diagnosis (NIPD) poses new questions from a disability rights perspective while carrying over many of the questions previously raised around PGD. As NIPD will make trait diagnosis available at an even earlier point in the pregnancy while eliminating the risk of miscarriage that kept previous PGD technologies in check, it seems more likely that expecting parents will seek out NIPD.

This presentation considered the risks that NIPD poses for disability rights, while also exploring the necessary coalitions that must be built to understand NIPD with feminist and anti-racist perspectives. Too often, the efforts of one marginalized group have come at the cost of another marginalized population.

• Will anti-sex-selection efforts position their cause against disability rights, taking it for granted that disability deselection is medical treatment, whereas sex selection is socially based?
• Will disability opposition to NIPD neglect race and class dynamics, for example where poor women of color may want to avoid a disabled child not out of some shallow hope for a designer baby but rather out of very real and significant social constraints?
• How do we ensure that the disability concerns raised over NIPD come from a feminist disability position, cautiously considering the dangers of this new technology, without infringing upon  women’s right to reproductive privacy?

In answering these questions, I suggest that NIPD must be understood in its neoliberal context. I will consider how NIPD demands a disability perspective, while also arguing for coalitional politics such that the disability effort does not work in isolation.