Culturally acceptable prenatal diagnostic services for Muslim populations should be based on early testing, and should involve Muslim physicians and religious authorities.

This paper reports findings from a comparative study of Israeli and German genetic counsellors' perceptions of the moral standing of the fetus. Data collected through in-depth interviews with counsellors in both countries (N=32) are presented, and their moral practices are analysed. The paper's findings suggest that while German counsellors perceive the fetus as an autonomous being and debate the particular biological stages through which this autonomy is acquired; Israeli counsellors do not consider the moral status of the fetus independently of its relations with its family hence, deploying a 'relational ethics'. It is suggested that these differences are influenced by historical, political, legal, and religious traditions in Germany and Israel regarding abortions and the fetus. It is concluded that the deployment of a 'biological ethics' by German counsellors reproduces the model of fetal developmental stages (in itself a construction), and hence goes hand in hand with perceptions of the fetus as a 'life', and thus as the bearer of autonomous rights which are understood to contradict those of its mother. On the other hand, the rejection of 'biological ethics' by Israeli counsellors enables a perception of fetuses that is first and foremost defined by their relationships with others.

Following reduction in mortality rates of term and preterm babies hospitalized in NICUs, neonataology refocused its concerns on the survivors' elevated risks of long-term health and developmental problems, thus turning the "intact survival" of hospitalized newborns into an equivalently desired moral and professional goal as their "survival." Based on ethnographic observations in an Israeli NICU ("pagia"), I suggest that the new moral practice has bearings on the construction of neonatal subjectivities. According to Jewish and Israeli laws, personhood is conferred on at birth. However, my findings indicate that in practice the question of "quality of life" often appears to be a stronger consideration than legal personhood when withdrawal of intensive therapies is discussed in the nursery. Consequently, the significance of the moment of birth to the construction of subjectivity is obscured. The construction of subjectivity as a progressively developed and irreversible category is challenged, and it becomes vulnerable.