BACKGROUND:

Prenatal diagnosis brings together a group of technologies that focus on the detection of congenital defects or anomalies of genetic and multifactorial origin. Irrespective of the type of test, any prenatal diagnostic technology must be accompanied by pre- and post-test counselling. The ethical underpinning of such counselling is of paramount interest to prenatal medicine and has been the task of several organisations.

METHODOLOGY:

Retrospective study, searching PubMed, Web of Science and Google Scholar databases using the MeSH terms: "pregnancy", "prenatal diagnosis", "genetic counselling", "relational autonomy" and "decision making".

RESULTS:

We found 909 references from which we eliminated those older than 20 years of publication, those without full text and those duplicated by searching in different databases. In the end, 25 full-text articles were analysed and served as the basis for the literature review.

CONCLUSIONS:

Ultrasound is currently the main gateway to the world of prenatal diagnosis. The ethical indication and use of any prenatal diagnostic technology prevents harm to the pregnancy as a whole and avoids the need for detailed legal regulation, which currently does not exist in many countries, including our own. Clear ethical guidelines are now available for advice on ultrasound as a prenatal diagnostic technique.