ELSIcon2024: Identifying and Dismantling Systemic Ableism in Prenatal Screening

ELSIcon2024 • Paper • June 11, 2024 

Authors:

Speaker: Stephanie Meredith, MA, DrPH (she/her/hers) - University of Kentucky

Our recent paper about the impact of implicit and disability explicit bias on parent experiences and information provided during prenatal screening and testing found that 61.3% of OB/ MFMs delivered a diagnosis of Down syndrome as bad news. Those clinicians who conveyed this implicit bias were significantly less likely than their unbiased counterparts to provide information about life outcomes, supports and services, condition-specific resources, or more comprehensive prenatal care. Moreover, about 1 in 10 parents described explicit bias where they were given blatantly incorrect and discriminatory information. This disparity in care and the provision of information about available supports and services suggests that ableism toward fetuses and neonates with disabilities could be a root cause of health disparities for people with disabilities if they are receiving less aggressive health care at the first point on the life course and parents are not being provided with critical information about supports and services that can address disparities in social determinants of health. This presentation will explore what steps can be taken to dismantle ableism and move toward greater health equity and social justice for people with disabilities in prenatal screening without infringing on the reproductive decision-making of pregnant people.

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