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Medical advancements currently allow parents to undergo preconception or neonatal genetic testing to determine the likelihood of a childhood defect.  The advent of genetic testing has compelled courts to develop novel causes of action based on traditional negligence principles to address these medical malpractice claims.  Typically, courts recognizing such parental malpractice actions address them as either wrongful birth claims or wrongful conception or pregnancy causes of action.

A thorough lack of consistency in how jurisdictions consider these claims, however, permeates prenatal tort law and cultivates confusion.  Some courts compartmentalize facts into specific prenatal causes of action yet diverge in their differentiations and in how they provide compensation to parental victims.  Other jurisdictions recognize these parental claims exclusively under traditional negligence principles instead of a new set of prenatal legal rights. Conversely, a minority of jurisdictions prohibit either one or more of the prenatal causes of action or traditional negligence suits stemming from birth-related circumstances. . . .