@article{564788c9798f4e1bbe5c004862152595,
title = "Bioconstitutional visions in the debate on non-invasive prenatal testing in Germany",
abstract = "Since the summer of 2022, statutory health insurance in Germany reimburses the costs of using non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), a new technology used in prenatal testing, in {\textquoteleft}justified individual cases{\textquoteright}. Analysing moments in the long debate on NIPT in Germany through the framework of bioconstitutionalism and with pragmatic lenses helps us to understand how and why this comparatively unique reimbursement decision became a reasonable and moral one. Conflicts and conversations in these moments reveal two competing definitions and visions of human life relating to measures deemed desirable and legitimate to protect that life. Actors articulating a liberal bioconstitutional vision framed NIPT as a biomedical technology that could protect the lives of foetuses and enable women to exercise their right to know without putting their pregnancy at risk. Actors foregrounding a societal bioconstitutional vision framed NIPT as a selective technology and spoke in the name of all those lives that would be affected by the direct and indirect consequences of NIPT. When public health care authorities endorsed NIPT as a biomedical technology to be reimbursed in individual cases, they sought to reconcile elements of both visions. The case of Germany shows that enduring controversies on reproductive technologies can put constraints on what state authorities are allowed to do. It also suggests that moral controversies on reproductive technologies and the salience of private markets of reproductive care might be the two sides of the same coin.",
author = "Ingrid Metzler",
note = "Funding Information: I have benefitted from many conversations and interactions throughout the research, writing, and revising process. I am grateful to the policy actors who have made time for interviews with me. I would like to thank all those colleagues who have helped me to improve the article. Steven Hilgartner and Sheila Jasanoff gave helpful and encouraging feedback when I presented then still very messy thoughts at the Science and Democracy Network's Annual Meeting in 2019. Heidrun {\AA}m raised a lot of helpful question when we were sharing office at the University of Vienna's Science and Technology Studies Department. Erik Aarden commented an earlier version of the paper. I would also like to thank the four anonymous reviewers and the editors of Science as Culture whose careful feedback and sometimes critical but always fair questions have helped me to improve the manuscript. I would also like to acknowledge the following funding: The research of this paper was enabled by a grant funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): T811-G27. The copy-editing of the manuscript's first version was funded by the University of Vienna's Faculty of Social Sciences. I would also like to acknowledge support by the Open Access Publishing Fund of Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences, Krems, Austria. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.",
year = "2023",
month = aug,
day = "30",
doi = "https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2023.2251998",
language = "English",
journal = "Science as Culture",
issn = "0950-5431",
publisher = "Taylor and Francis Ltd.",
}