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Genetic counseling was established within the Swedish healthcare system in the 1960s and 1970s. During this period the idea of individual autonomy, which had been introduced into genetic counseling already in the 1950s, was gradually strengthened. The paper discusses the development of medical knowledge and technologies related to heredity during this period, from empirical risk calculations to the introduction of amniocentesis and chromosomal analysis, and how this development posed new choices to the individual. It is argued that although the ideal of individual autonomy was invariably stressed, the counselors’ attitudes and more general norms and values about genetic diseases and disability also influenced the individual decisions

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