Congenital conditions can be scary - some develop only after adulthood (or methods of detection were only developed in later years), at this juncture you might have children and passed on these illnesses to them. If on the other hand you find out about them before you have children what are the options you have. Based on the condition you could have a 0 - 100% chance depending on whether it is recessive/dominant and your partner's genetics. Assuming of course that you want to have children (otherwise the discussion becomes moot), what are the choices you have. If the chances are especially high of passing on the condition there is always adopting children. Assuming then that you want to have biological children there seems to be two choices.
First there is preimplantation genetic diagnosis which requires the use of IVF. This means the testing is done before implantation but at the embryo stage (I believe after the third division). Of course this means taking the IVF route which is a costly procedure and becomes a longer route if the couple has no other problems concieving. Only certain diseases can be tested for and it assumes that one cell is representive off all - leading to more false positives/negatives. Not all countries provide this due to ethical concerns
Prenatal diagnosis is the other option which can be non-invasive for certain conditions or more invasive procedures like aminocentesis. Invasive procedures carry their own risks to the fetus.
Both these procedures come close to eugenic like selections - hence the reason for most ethical arguments against them. Although as a parent who is likely to pass on congential conditions to their children perhaps it would not seem this way as they are not using these procedures to select sex or traits.
The tricky part is if there is a positive result to these tests. In the preimplantation diagnosis it would be an easier proces to discard the embryo (as not all embryos generated for IVF are used anyway regardless of screening). In the other case it comes down to whether the parent wished to carry the child to term or abort the pregnancy. Some conditions would cause death or severe disability almost from the time of birth hence it seems ok to abort the pregnancy. Fetal corrective procedures are rare so this seems the choice that comes with prenatal screening. There is also the case of less sever cases where the child maybe able to live a semi normal - normal life with assistance - so are you taking away this right. The parents physical/mental/ financial ability to cope with such children I think needs to be taken into consideration. Of course if abortion is illegal in a certain country these tests can lead to no useful results except perhaps better prepareredness before the birth of the child. What about the extreame case of diseases which are late developing - i.e. person can lead a normal life until their 50s or 60s where the congenital condition starts giving problems. Does a parent abort or carry the child to term. The person might never develop problems (or they might), they might die earlier of unrelated incidents, a cure maybe developed in their lifetime. Is there some good to try to stop the continuation of passing on these genes which seemingly have a negative impact on the human being's health. Or is this a mild form of eugenics too.
