42

When one of the partners in a couple bears the gene responsible for Huntington’s disease, the couple finds itself confronted by a number of possible reproductive choices. They can resort to a prenatal diagnosis, a preimplantation diagnosis, have a child naturally with the risk of transmitting the disease to it, or opt for the radical and painful decision not to have a child at all. Through interviews with couples, the article analyses the outcome of the desire to have a child in such a context. The unforeseen diagnosis of genetic disease can creep into the effects of retrospect and deploy along the lines of two configurations: the first where discontinuity, passivation and distress reign and the second where unpredictability can accompany a movement of trophic transformation for the couple. The man’s and the woman’s subjective positions can then be insufficiently brought into conflict when one of the partners wishes to have a child and the other refuses, fearing not just handing down the disease to the child but also the illness’s consequences on their partner.