Analysis: It could create an underclass, but provision of information to allow choice is key argument

The Human Genetics Commission's report seeks to improve levels of patient choice and decision-making by providing earlier information on an individual's genetic inheritance.

It's view is that there are no specific social, ethical or legal implications of making preconception genetic testing available through population screening programmes.

Such issues are always prone to raising public concerns and strongly held opinions on both sides; either any attempt to identify and provide information to individuals who are, as yet unknowingly, affected by an inherited condition is a good thing, or it represents yet another assault on the value of those who carry or are affected by such conditions. My views lie firmly in favour of the provision of information.

Information promotes individual autonomous choice on the basis of greater understanding and leads to more fully informed decision-making. The individual can make better informed reproductive choices, and has options to avoid the transmission of inherited disease. Preconception screening also has the potential to reduce the number of abortions on the grounds of a diagnosis of foetal abnormality during the course of pregnancy.

Some will oppose such a move on the grounds that it assumes that it is necessarily "better" to manipulate the resultant child so as to avoid inheritance of the genetic abnormality that nature would otherwise give them.

However, the overall promotion of autonomy and self-governancerequires that the individual is aware of themselves and the consequences of the various attributes they have.

• Dr Sarah Christie is a Reader in Law at Robert Gordon University